NOTSTRING

The NOTSTRING field specifier (case sensitive) allows you to find documents in which at least one instance of the specified fields contains a value that does not contain any of the specified strings as a substring.

If there are one or more instances of a particular field in the document, the document returns if at least one instance does not contain any of the specified strings, even if another instance of the field does contain the string. The document does not return if all instances of the specified fields contain one of the specified strings as a substring.

NOTE: You can optimize the field specifier speed by restricting the field to the MatchType property type.

Format

FieldText=STRING{yourStrings}:yourFields
yourStrings

One or more strings. A document returns only if at least one instance of one of yourFields contains a value that is not a substring of any of these strings. You can specify strings that contain punctuation (but see Note) or consist of several words.

NOTE: Strings in the query should be percent-encoded. This ensures that any commas or curly braces that are part of a string are not interpreted as query syntax. If you are sending HTTP requests using the content-type application/x-www-form-urlencoded you should then percent-encode all parameter values, meaning that any commas or curly braces that are part of a string are percent-encoded twice (such that a comma is represented by the sequence %252c). For more information, see Percent Encoding in Queries.
yourFields One or more fields. A document returns only if it contains one of these fields, and if the value in at least one instance of the field does not contain any of yourStrings as a substring. Separate multiple fields with colons (:). There must be no space before or after a colon.

Example

FieldText=NOTSTRING{cat,dog}:ANIMAL:TOPIC

At least one instance of the ANIMAL or TOPIC field value must contain a value that does not contain the substring cat or dog for the document to return.

For example, if a document contains only:

#DREFIELD ANIMAL="old cat"

or

#DREFIELD TOPIC="dogs like playing catch"
#DREFIELD ANIMAL="dog"

Then it does not return as a result.

However, if the document contains:

#DREFIELD TOPIC="dogs have trouble catching mice"
#DREFIELD ANIMAL="dog"
#DREFIELD ANIMAL="mouse"

Then it returns as a result, as one of the ANIMAL fields does not contain the substring cat or dog.

NOTE: To find documents in which the specified string is not present in any instance of the specified field, use the STRING specifier with the Boolean operator NOT. For example, FieldText=NOT+STRING{cat,dog}:ANIMAL does not return any documents that have a ANIMAL field with the substring cat or dog, even if there are other ANIMAL fields with different values.

See Also