Regular expressions allow you to phrase ambiguous searches.
For example, if you search for "actin" you'll get anything containing "actin" anywhere in the title.
If you search for "actin.*in", it means "actin" followed by 0 or more characters, then "in". So it will give you actinin, actinomysin, but not actin.
If you search for "actin.+in", it means "actin" followed by 1 or more characters, then "in". So it will give you actinomysin, but not actinin.
If you search for "actin.in", it means "actin" followed by exactly 1 characters, then "in". As far as I know, that won't match anything!
You can also search for a range of characters: "actin[a-z]n" means "actin" followed by one lower case character, then "n". So it will find actinin.
Does this sound confusing? Don't worry; you can just type in keywords and you'll get what you expect!
¥ Use the singular: two people have looked unsuccessfully for "mitochondria" so far.
¥ Be sure of your spelling: someone has already looked for "tumer suppressor".
¥ European spellings prevail: for example, we use "tumour" rather than "tumor" and "haem-" rather than "heme-".
¥ Avoid hyphenated words: as regular expressions put a special meaning on hyphens, searches like "G-protein" will be problematic. It's best to look for either word singly, then chose from the list of matches that's returned. In fact, I've made the search engine throw away everything except the FIRST word of any search string. It was getting heartbreaking watching people composing over-elaborate search strings in novel interpretations of the regualr expression suyntax, knowing they were doomed to fail.
¥ Using the search box: some client programs require you to click the cursor in the search box before you can enter text; some will let you launch a search by hitting return, while others will just add a return to your search string, dooming you to failure! Sorry, but that's a client problem, not at this end.
Click here to return to the Dictionary home page.
Julian Dow, 17/10/94