Wild card search

[Argel]

Is there a way to get a wild-card search on Kindle 2?

I was disappointed to find that a search for 'notice' also returns 'notices' but not other words containing the search term, like 'noticed' or 'noticeboard'.

Can't find any reference to wild cards in the Guide...

[poohbear_nc]

I don't know of any documented ways, but in many computer languages the * is used for wildcard searches - representing any character or any number of characters. Don't have my Kindle with me, but you might try noti* and see what happens.

[Argel]

Originally Posted by poohbear_nc

I don't know of any documented ways, but in many computer languages the * is used for wildcard searches - representing any character or any number of characters. Don't have my Kindle with me, but you might try noti* and see what happens.

Many thanks for the suggestion. I should have said that I'd already tried '*' as a wild card without success. Nor can I see any setting for 'find part of a word'.

If true, it's such a pity because it severely reduces the utility of the search for no good reason. If you're not going to offer an option then sticking at 'search for words containing' is far more useful than 'search for whole word' and arguably easier to program.

[Kindle Addict]

Argel,

Your question inspired me to try and hack the Kindle find, which resulted in a new article all about find on Kindicted.com.

Here's an excerpt that speaks directly to your question:

Find Syntax for Documents (except PDF)
Right off the bat, the find command for documents does not have wildcards, grep syntax, etc. Multiple words can be entered separated by a space, as can e-mail addresses and web sites. All symbols are summarily ignored (and can even be in the middle of words) except for "." and "@", which are used for searching the aforementioned sites and addresses. Here are a few observations:

• Plurals are automatically included in search results.

• Common small words are ignored ("of", "and", "the", etc.).

• Searches are case-insensitive.

• Individual letters can be searched.

• All surrounding punctuation/symbols are highlighted in the search results, but cannot be specified in the search.

• Numbers can be searched - leading zeroes are relevant.

• Symbols between words (such as the "://" in "http://www") can be excluded entirely - the search will still work (provided the url does not continue on a new line after the "http://"). In order words "httpwww" is equivalent to "http://www".

Please keep in mind that these rules are only for searching documents. PDFs, Wikipedia, Google, and the Amazon store all have different search syntax.

- Kindict

[Argel]

Originally Posted by Kindle Addict

Your question inspired me to try and hack the Kindle find, which resulted in a new article all about find on Kindicted.com.

Many thanks for the response, even though it confirms my fears.