What I did for this kind of problem is pre-processing tbe list or year (actually, I pre-processed a list of month numbers, but it is the same).
Ths used-end search parameter is : find documents published in the last 3, 6 month, or 1, 2, 6 years... The swish query is actually : search documents which has month numbers 1870 or 1869 or 1868, ans so on...
I know this is not very beautyful, but it works because I limit the search to 6 years (which makes searchs with 72 different months values...). The swish engine is fast enough to handle this very efficiently. Has I always say : the response time is always very low compared to the response time of the modem the user is usually behind...

Yours,

Nicolas Huillard

-----Message d'origine-----
De:	Simon McLean [SMTP:simon.mclean@kcl.ac.uk]
Date:	mercredi 11 août 1999 11:32
À:	Multiple recipients of list
Objet:	[SWISH-E] Meta or free text date comparisons

Dear Swish users,

How can I make date range comparisons (not file dates)
eg if I have META DATE=1945-1951 or even free text with similar stuff
in,
via swish search of '>1946 and <1950 ' for example.

I could have a search front end with  a single year in e.g. 1946 to pick
up the date from the above. I can pre-process to a list of years, but
this does not really solve the range thing.

I take it that I can't do '>' and '<' comparisons as it doesnt seem to
be documented(??)

Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Simon McLean

--
_______________________________________________
Senior Applications Analyst/Advisor (Webmaster)
Kings College, Strand, London WC2R 2LS
Tel:    +44 (0)171 848 1789
Email:  simon.mclean@kcl.ac.uk