Hi Erik, thanks for your reply, I had read this page. But I'm not using the "NOT" operator, I'm using the "-" operator. I'm assuming there is a subtle difference between them in that NOT qualifies something else, hence needs 2 terms. Isn't the "-" operator supposed to be a complement to the "+" operator, ie. excludes something rather than requiring it ?
thanks Karen On Monday 14 January 2008 15:14:05 Erick Erickson wrote: > Have you seen this page? > http://lucene.apache.org/java/docs/queryparsersyntax.html > > From that page: > Note: The NOT operator cannot be used with just one term. For example, the > following search will return no results: > NOT "jakarta apache" > > > Erick > > On Jan 14, 2008 9:30 AM, Karen Loughran <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Hi all, > > > > We are indexing different types of documents, some with certain fields > > set and > > some without, some fields sometimes in both. > > > > If a particular field is missing in a newly added record, I would have > > expected the query: > > > > field_name:(-null) > > > > not to return this particular record in the response, ie, I'm assuming > > the field is set to null. > > > > But the response we see includes empty docs: > > > > ...... > > .... > > .. > > <doc> > > </doc> > > <doc> > > </doc> > > <doc> > > </doc> > > etc, etc.... > > .. > > .... > > > > Can someone explain why field_name:(-null) returns the records where > > field_name is missing ? > > > > We note that if we do the range operation we can get a response without > > the > > records with no field_name: > > > > field_name:[* TO *] > > > > Many thanks > > Karen
