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Stop Words

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Xapian supports a stop word list, which allows you to specify what words should be removed from a query before processing. This list can be overridden or stop words can still be searched for if desired, but by default any words in the active stop words list will not be searched for.

Example

Section titled “Example”
SEARCH /bank/


{
  "_query": {
    "personality": "these days are few and far between"
  }
}

The stop words in the phrase (these, are, and) are removed before the query runs, and only the remaining content words (days, few, far, between) are searched. That is why documents match even though none of them contain the whole phrase.

Searching of Stop Words

Section titled “Searching of Stop Words”

Stop words can be searched by using Love and Hate Modifiers (by adding + to the desired stop word) or by using an empty set of stopwords in the _stopwords keyword:

SEARCH /bank/


{
  "_query": {
    "personality": "+these days +are +few +and +far +between"
  }
}

The above example is equivalent to:

SEARCH /bank/


{
  "_query": {
    "personality": {
      "_value": "these days are few and far between",
      "_stopwords": []
    }
  }
}