Note: the author of this paper has moved to liamquin at interlog dot com
This listing shows part of a session using lq, a shell-script that uses lq-text. The faq command invokes lq after setting up environment variables and options to use the news.answers database.
: sqrex!lee; faq Using database in /usr/spool/news/faq.db... | Type words or phrases to find, one per line, followed by a blank line. | Use control-D to quit. Type ? for more information. > text retrieval > Computer Science Technical Report Archive Sites == news/answers/17480 1:v.edu> comments: research reports on text retrieval and OCR orgcode: ISRI Interleaf FAQ -- Frequently Asked Questions for comp.text.interleaf == news/answers/17607 2:g with hypertext navigation and full-text retrieval. 1.2. What platform alt.cd-rom FAQ == news/answers/17643 3:and Mac. 56. Where can I find a full text retrieval engine for a CDROM I a 4:======== 56. Where can I find a full text retrieval engine for a CDROM I a 5: I am making? Here is a list of Full-Text Retrieval Engines from the CD-PU OPEN LOOK GUI FAQ 02/04: Sun OpenWindows DeskSet Questions == news/answers/18078 6:OOK/XView/mf-fonts FAQs;lq-text unix text retrieval who is my neighbour? OPEN LOOK GUI FAQ 04/04: List of programs with an OPEN LOOK UI == news/answers/18079 7: Description: Networked, distributed text-retrieval system. OLIT-based fr 8:OOK/XView/mf-fonts FAQs;lq-text unix text retrieval who is my neighbour? [comp.text.tex] Metafont: All fonts available in .mf format == news/answers/18080 9:OOK/XView/mf-fonts FAQs;lq-text unix text retrieval who is my neighbour? OPEN LOOK GUI FAQ 03/04: the XView Toolkit == news/answers/18082 10:OOK/XView/mf-fonts FAQs;lq-text unix text retrieval who is my neighbour? Catalog of free database systems == news/answers/18236 11:------------------ name: Liam Quin's text retrieval package (lq-text) vers 12: are bugs. description: lq-text is a text retrieval package. That means | Type words or phrases to find, one per line, followed by a blank line. | Use control-D to quit. Type ? for more information. > :less 9 (brings up the 9th match in a pager) > :help | Commands | | :help | Shows you this message. | :view [n,n1-n2,n...] | Use :view to see the text surrounding matches. | The number n is from the left-hand edge of the index; | :set maxhits explains ranges in more detail. | :page [n,n1-n2,n...] | Uses less -c (which you can set | in the $PAGER Unix environment variable) to show the files matched. | :less [n,n1-n2,n...] | The same as :page except that it starts on the line number | containing the match, firing up the pager separately on | each file. | :index [n,n1-n2,n...] | This shows the indexfor the phrases you've typed. | :files [n,n1-n2,n...] | This simply lists all of the files that were matched, | in ranked order. | :prefix prefix-string | Shows all of the words in the database that begin with that prefix, | together with the number of times they occur. | :grep egrep-pattern | Shows all of the words in the database that match that egrep pattern, | together with the number of times they occur (not the number of files | in which they appear, though). | :set option ... | Type :set to see more information about setting options. | :shell [command ...] | Use /home/sqrex/lee/bin/sun4os4/msh to run commands. | | Commands that take a list of matches (n,n1-n2,n...) | only work when you have generated a list of matches. If you don't give | any arguments, you get the whole list. | > :set | :set match [precise|heuristic|rough] | to set the phrase matching level, | currently heuristic matching (the default) | :set index | to see a Key Word In Context (KWIC) index of the matches | :set text | to browse the actual text that was matched | :set database directory | to use the database in the named directory. | Current value: /usr/spool/news/faq.db | :set rank [all|most|any] | all presents only documents containing all the phrases you typed; | most shows those first, and then documents with all but one of | the phrases, and so on. | any doesn't bother sorting the matches; this is the default, | because it's the fastest. | Currently: find documents containing all of the phrases | :set tags string | determine whether SGML tags are shown or hidden in the KWIK index | :set tagchar string | set the character used as a replacement for hidden SGML tags | :set maxhits n|all | show only the first n matches (currently 200) | :set prompt string | set the prompt for typing in phrases to string > ^C Interrupted, bye. : sqrex!lee;