On Thu, Jul 17, 2003 at 01:33:19PM -0700, Jasen Fici wrote:
> How do I search for documents where the property value is empty?  For
> example:
> 
> Description = "" and document contains the word "giraffe"

Swish-e doesn't really do that.  Swish creates a reverse index -- you
enter a word and it tells you what files contain that word.  You can say
"not foo" because swish can find what contains foo and then invert that
list.  Swish doesn't keep track of when a file/metaname doesn't contain
any words.

Now with that said, maybe if your field is small you could either 
check/filter on indexing (using -S prog to pre-process your files), or 
set it as a property and then try and use -L to select everything less 
than something small.  (IIRC a missing property will sort like a very 
small value...).  Might be slow, but might try something like:

  swish-e -w giraffe -L description < '!'

Might be nice if could specify something like ^A, but doesn't seem to 
work.  The -L option is not very scalable, I suspect, so you will need 
to test for your own data.

(minor point, but you search metanames -- properties are just for 
display -- well, you can limit by properties.)


-- 
Bill Moseley
moseley@hank.org