This help file explains in moderate detail what each field in the search page means. If you still can't locate the help you need or you want to report an error please mail us at archie@greektimes.ca and we will get back to you as soon as we can. That address is also the Archie mail interface, so a message whose body is a query will be answered with results.

Here you type in the search variable. If regular expression is the type of search you are using then the string would be the regular expression you are looking for.

This section is an addition by this server. Bunyip's own help file does not describe it. The behaviour it describes is Bunyip's, is present in the shipped software, and has simply never been written down.

The Search For box accepts more than one term, and you may join terms with the operators AND, OR and NOT, typed in capitals as words of the query itself. There is no separate control for this on the search page; the operators go in the box with your terms.

Two or more bare words are joined by AND. This is worth knowing, because it is what you will meet by accident. Typing two words does not widen your search, it narrows it: only entries matching every word are returned.

Worked example against this server's own catalogue, so you can reproduce each line exactly:

     README                    5 hits
     PKZIP                     4 hits

     README OR PKZIP           9 hits    (5 + 4)
     README AND PKZIP          0 hits    (nothing matches both)
     README PKZIP              0 hits    (bare words: identical to AND above)
     README NOT PKZIP          5 hits    (matches README, excluding PKZIP)

A correction by this server, 2026-07-27. An earlier version of this page described OR as returning "everything in either". That is the right answer for the numbers above but the wrong description of the operator, and the distinction only becomes visible on a catalogue where some entries match both terms. OR concatenates the two result lists rather than forming a set union, so its count is the sum of the two counts and any entry matching both terms is counted twice. In the example above nothing matches both, AND is 0, and concatenation and union happen to give the same 9.

Measured on this server's Web Index catalogue:

     parade                   12 documents
     festival                 25 documents

     parade OR festival       34 documents   (12 + 25, less the 3 that match
                                              both and are listed once)
     parade AND festival       3 documents
     parade NOT festival       9 documents   (12 - 3)

The two catalogues differ, and the reason is what a result IS. On the Anonymous FTP catalogue a result is a FILE, and a file has one name, so OR behaves as the concatenation described above and the counts simply add: 5 + 4 = 9. On the Web Index a result is a DOCUMENT, and a document carries many keywords, so one document can match through more than one of them. This server lists each document once, which is what Bunyip's own description of these formats calls for ("a short excerpt from each document is displayed after its URL"), and the effect is that OR on the Web Index reads as a true union: 12 + 25 - 3 = 34. This is Bunyip's own behaviour, not a fault of this installation, and their source says so at the site of the omission with a date on it:

     /*
      *  Here I SHOULD do an OR operation to get rid of redundancy we'll see
      *  when I will get to do this 961024
      */

Operators and terms must alternate. README OR PKZIP OR cuseeme is valid; two operators in a row is not, and will be refused.

Please note: the AND and OR buttons further down this page, under Optional Parameters, are a different setting altogether. Those control how the terms of the path restriction field combine with one another, and have no effect on the terms you type in the Search For box.

Also an addition by this server. These parameters are parsed by Bunyip's shipped CGI exactly as described; the search page simply offers no control for them.

• strings : set to YES to return only the distinct names that matched, without resolving each one to its site, path, size and date. On this catalogue a substring search for README returns 5 files but only 3 distinct names, so the strings-only form of the same search returns 3 results. Useful for finding out what a search would match before asking for the full listing.
• maxmatch : limits how many distinct matched names are returned, as distinct from maxhits, which limits total files. Setting maxmatch to 1 reduces the README search above from 5 results to 1.

The database which will be undergoing the search. If you are searching the web then press on the Web Index button. Otherwise if you are searching the FTP sites then press on the other button.

• Exact:
• Sub String:
  Substring (case insensitive): A match occurs if the file (or directory) name in the database contains the user-given substring, without regard to case.

  Example:
  
                 The pattern:
                      is
  
                 matches any of the following:
  
                      islington
                      this
                      poison
  
  

  Substring (case sensitive): As above, but taking case as significant.

  Example:
  
                 The pattern:
  
                      TeX
  
                 will match:
  
                      LaTeX
  
                 but neither of the following:
  
                      Latex
                      TExTroff
  

• Regular Expression: Regular expressions follow the conventions of the ed(1) command, allowing sophisticated pattern matching. Regular expressions imbue certain characters with special meaning, providing a quoting mechanism to remove this special meaning when required.

This option only affects searches of type Regular Expression and Substring.

This controls the output format for results from the Web Index database.

• Keywords Only: The most frequently occurring Keywords in each document will be displayed after the document's URL.
• Excerpts Only: A short excerpt from each document is displayed after its URL.
• Links Only: Only links are displayed with no further details. No excerpts or Keywords are displayed with each URL.

Optional Parameters

• Path restriction or exclusion: Several parameters could be used to improve your search results. But first you must specify what type of operation to be used on those upcoming fields. If you specify OR then you ask that the strings you provide in these fields have an OR relationship among them. Otherwise if you specify AND then you are asking for all the strings that you provide in these fields to be considered.
  • Path Restriction : You can improve the results by restricting on the path of each URL that comes back. The strings you provide in these field will be matched against the paths returned in the result and paths that do not contain these strings will be disregarded. If you have chosen the OR as your operator among the strings then if any of the strings occur in a path this path will be considered valid. However if you have chosen AND as your operator then unless all the entered strings appear in the path, the path is invalid.
  • Path Exclusion : You can exclude certain results from coming back if they contain a specific string you don't need to see. By specifying this string in this field you will achieve your goal.
• Domains: This variable allows you to restrict the scope of your search based upon the Fully Qualified Domain Names (FQDN) of the anonymous FTP or Web sites being searched. In this way, you can specify a list of domain names to which all returned sites must match.
• Maximum Hits : Allows Archie to generate at most the specified number of matches (permissible range: 0-200; default: 100).
• Maximum Hits Per Match : Across all the anonymous FTP and Web archives on the Internet (and even on one single anonymous FTP archive) many files will have the same name. For example, if you search for a very common filename like "README" you can get hundreds even thousands of matches. You can limit the number of files with the same name through this variable.

  [Note added by this server, 2026-07-27. Bunyip's description above is correct for Archie as Bunyip shipped and ran it, and is reproduced here unaltered. It does not apply to this deployment. The per-match cap is disabled in archQuery on this server: the line that would apply it is commented out in Bunyip's own source, so the value is accepted and then never used. It is still live in archQueryMore, which this gateway never calls. Accordingly no search form here offers a Maximum Hits Per Match field, and none will be added while the parameter does nothing. Use Maximum Hits and Maximum Match, both of which work as described. The evidence is recorded in section 8.5 of the deployment appendix.]

• Maximum Match : This variable will limit the number filenames (or strings matched) returned. For example, if maxmatch is set to 2 and you perform a substring search for the string "etc", and the database contains filenames "etca", "betc" and "detc" only the filenames "etca" and "betc" will be returned. However, depending on the values of maxhitspm and maxhits you will get back a number of actual files with those names.