1841 census - advice please

[Elwyn 1]

Lesley,

Many thanks. I got there in the end thanks to everyone's help. (I too found that sliding the two ampersands around made a difference. Why two??) I would not have managed to find this data without help. It is extremely difficult to use the advanced search, and the instructions are woefully inadequate. I think Scotlandspeople need to do a bit more work there to explain and improve the facility.


Elwyn

[LesleyB]

Hi Elwyn

I too found that sliding the two ampersands around made a difference. Why two??)

Because it is a database (and databases are always picky beggars in the main) and because it uses "Lucene Query Parser Syntax " so your syntax has to be in the language the database it is expecting or it will not comply and give you the results you are after - that's databases for you! Also because, although you could use AND, when searching it may see AND as a word to be searched for, not part of your syntax, so the symbols are used to make it see that you mean "and" as in "as well as" ..... I think of it a bit like trying to get info or directions out of a French person or German who only understands (or pretends to!) and will only converse in local dialect, not the standard French or German language you learnt at school!!

See
http://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk/Conte ... r=551&2026
"Symbols should be used instead of words as words are picked up as search terms."
and if you really want to know more, try the link from there to:
http://lucene.apache.org/core/old_versi ... yntax.html

Not bedtime reading material!! (well, not for most of us, anyway)

Best wishes
Lesley

[Currie]

In over 12 years of using a keyboard I don’t think I’ve ever used it to make one of these |||||||||||||, although I’ve copied and pasted a few over the years. I probably would have gone looking for something in symbols, except that I’ve just noticed that it’s above the \\\\\\\\\ key.

Alan