Search engines

[Charles Blair]

> "any of these terms" keyword searches in Lycos and Alta Vista
> made use of the weighted search capability of both services.

> "all of these terms" option available in these search engines'
> simple search (as opposed to power search) interface.

Unless I'm way off base (known to happen), I read "ANY of these terms"
as "OR," and "ALL of these terms" as "AND." Since the advent of WAIS,
OR'd searches seem popular (with the function of ANDing being mimicked
by having the most relevant items rise to the top), and seem to be the
default in both Alta Vista and Lycos. (You have to plough around to
get the AND option.)

Actually, I just checked on Lycos to make sure I wasn't way off base,
and it explicitly equates OR with ANY (the default, even in the
advanced option) and AND with ALL.

As an aside, most people use "and" when they mean Boolean OR: if I ask
for a listing of all the locksmiths in London and Paris, I'm not
expecting to find zero hits (or close to zero); I'm expecting to find
quite a few, because I mean all the locksmithis in London OR
Paris. Similarly, most people use "or" to mean XOR: you may have
either chocolate or vanilla (but not both).