Minh: Why not just use a special character or string (one that won't appear in a non-empty field) to represent an empty field? It doesn't have to appear in the user interface, if that's a concern; you could convert a query including "FieldA:NULL" (or whatever) into a query containing "FieldA:emptyfield" automatically.
This allows you to finesse the entire issue of adding something to Lucene--which may be for the best anyway, since this is really just a special case of looking for fields whose contents have a specific characteristic. Good luck-- Joshua O'Madadhain [EMAIL PROTECTED] Per Obscurius...www.ics.uci.edu/~jmadden Joshua O'Madadhain: Information Scientist, Musician, Philosopher-At-Tall It's that moment of dawning comprehension that I live for--Bill Watterson My opinions are too rational and insightful to be those of any organization. On Tue, 17 Dec 2002, Minh Kama Yie wrote: > Thanks for that Peter. > > Unfortunately I'm not looking for "all" documents but rather documents where > the fields can be empty. > Hence using the universal field wouldn't quite work. > The "empty:true" approach is interesting however it effectively doubles the > number of indexable fields for a document. > > Need to assess whether or not we want to support this feature I guess. > > Currently, considering Lucene's architecture this feature needs to be > inherently supported rather than worked around with various fields I think > for it to be used/done properly... > > Would anyone be able to point me in the general direction of where to look > in the Lucene code to attempt this? > Hopefully this way I can give a proper cost/benefit analysis as to whether > or not to support this feature...and if all goes well, release something > back for the great work you guys do.... > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Peter Carlson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: "Lucene Users List" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Sent: Tuesday, December 17, 2002 4:25 PM > Subject: Re: Empty phrase search > > > > I don't think so. > > > > One approach to look for everything, or not something is to add a field > > to each document which is a constant value. Like a field named exists > > and a value of true. > > > > Then you can do search like > > > > exists:true NOT microsoft > > > > This will find all documents without the term microsoft in them. > > > > Just to have it find documents with nothing might be a little tricky. > > You might want to put a field in the document which indicates the size > > or something like that. Or just create an empty field and look for > > > > empty:true > > > > I hope this rambling helps > > > > --Peter > > > > On Monday, December 16, 2002, at 03:24 PM, Minh Kama Yie wrote: > > > > > Hi guys, > > > > > > Just wondering if lucene indexes empty strings and if so, how to > > > search for this using the query language? > > > > > > > > > Regards, > > > > > > Minh Kama Yie > > > > > > This message is intended only for the named recipient. > > > If you are not the intended recipient you are notified that > > > disclosing, copying, distributing or taking any action > > > in reliance on the contents of this information is strictly > > > prohibited. > > > > > > -- > > To unsubscribe, e-mail: > <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > For additional commands, e-mail: > <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > > -- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > For additional commands, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For additional commands, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
