A search can be started from any page, using the Search box in upper right of each page.

DokuWiki's default search is a “logical AND” search — that is, all the words you put in the query will be used.

Search is always case insensitive.

All of the syntaxes can be combined together.

In this section, we'll use square brackets [ … ] to represent characters entered in the query.

You can search for exact phrases by putting double quotes around a set of words, e.g. [ “Cornell Law Review” ]. 

To exclude pages, from a search, which contain a specific word or phrase, then attach a minus sign - immediately before the excluded word/phrase.

For example, searching for [ “Cornell Law Review” ]

• will find the 3 pages —

those which contain “Cornell Law Review”:

• briefing_book_pdf_files_4014
• problems_with_the_testimony_of_robert_brown_pdf_files_16269
• problems_in_the_testimony_of_robert_brown_txt_pages_19389

But, searching for [ “Cornell Law Review” -Humbertson ]

• will find only the 2 pages —

those which contain “Cornell Law Review” but do not contain “Humbertson”:

• briefing_book_pdf_files_4014
• problems_with_the_testimony_of_robert_brown_pdf_files_16269

To search for words for which you want the root word, plus any variation with suffixes (-ed, -ing, etc.), by using Partial Matching.

Add a prefix and/or suffix of an asterisk * to a search word.

For example, searching for [ onboard ]

• will only find “onboard”.

but searching for [ onboard* ]

• will also find “onboard, onboarding, onboarded”.

Extending the example:

Searching for [ onboard ] results in these top search results:

• 8 Hits: energy_independence_charter_pdf_files_15840
• 8 Hits: texas_cos_energy_independence_coalition_eic_txt_pages_15296
• 7 Hits: texas_election_action_coalition_charter_docx_files_14865

          (where “# hits” in the search results means number of times word appeared in document);

while searching for [ onboard* ] results in a different set of top 3 search results — and a larger number of “hits” within each document:

• 64 Hits: leaders_onboarding_guide_pdf_files_22275
• 19 Hits: lmt_applicant_processing_pdf_files_8219
• 17 Hits: texas_election_action_coalition_charter_docx_files_14865

You can also perform [ doku* ] (prefix matching) and [*okuwik*] (partial matching). .
Note that * is not a “wildcard”. You can't use it inside of a word. For example, searching [ doku*iki ] will not find anything for you.

By default, DokuWiki searches for all the words in your search, but you can also search for any of your search terms. (This is called a logical OR search.)

OR searching is done by including | or or as a separator between your search terms.

For example, the query [ event | show ] will find pages which contain either “plugin” or “template” or both.

The query [ event or show ] will do the same thing.

You can make use of OR as a way to find search terms with spelling variations, for example [ capitol | capital ], or, [ state capitol | state capital ].

_

The OR operator has a lower 'precedence' than the default AND operator.

That is, the query

[ gun show | event ]

is the same as

[ (gun show) | event ].

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$$$  add a screen print of the sample search  $$$

.
But, if you needed to search for (gun show) or for (gun event), you could not write it as [ gun (show | event) ].

Instead, use a grouping search — as described below.

You can group search terms by enclosing terms with parentheses ( … ). Having the highest precedence, parentheses may be used to force precedence.

For example, the query [ dokuwiki -(plugin | @plugin) ] will find pages which contain a word “DokuWiki” but not contain a word “plugin” and also are not within a namespace “plugin”.