3. Advanced Searching
gWaei already tries to do semi-intelligent searches, placing the most relevant results at the top. It is possible to filter out even more unwanted results by understanding how gWaei does the searches. There are basically two separate search engines the program employs depending on the dictionary file that is being used. General searches and Kanji/Radical searches.
3.1. General Searches
General searches allow the usage of regular expressions. Even if you do not type in a regular expression yourself, gWaei still is using them in the background to categorize and move relevant results to the top of the window. Below are some examples of meta-characters and phrases.
"\b" is used to denote word boundaries.
"\B" is used to denote non word bondaries.
"." is a wild card character. It represents one character.
".*" add a star and it means any number of the character.
".+" means at least one of the character.
"(A|B)" would return results containing "A" or "B".
 | Example: If you search for "fish\b", results like "fish" and "monkfish" would pop up. "Fishing", "fisherman", and "unselfishness" would not. |
3.2. Kanji and Radical Searches
These dictionaries do not accept regular expressions. Instead, gWaei divides the query into atoms and makes sure that every one of the atoms exists in the results returned. The main kind of atom you will be using with these dictionary are kanji and radical characters. The other type of atom is in the form of a capital letter and a number. Below are some example of this type.
"G#" will make sure that only kanji of # grade level are returned.
"S#" will make sure only kanji of # strokes are returned.
"J#" returns the kanji that will appear on that level of the JLPT.
"F#" will return kanji with a specific appearance frequency in texts.
| Example: "口田S14" would return results that have Kanji/radicals "口" and "田" and take 14 strokes do draw. It doesn't matter if you put spaces to increase readability as gWaei will filter them out. "口田 S14" will return the exact same results. |