View source for Gallery Searching

Galleries may be searched using various criteria. Searches may only be performed once every 3 seconds.

==Search Terms==
Search terms should be separated by spaces. 
==Operators==
;Quotation Marks ("...")
*Exact search. Allows a search term to include spaces. Everything placed inside a pair of quotation marks is treated as one, whole term (wildcard characters are still interpreted as wildcards).
;Question Mark (?), Underscore (_)
*Wildcard. Can match any single character.
;Asterisk (*), Percentage Sign (%)
*Wildcard. Can match any sequence of characters (including none).
;Subtraction Sign (-)
*Exclusion. When placed before a term, prevents search results from including that term.

===Examples===
<pre>comic*xo*4</pre>
The above search would match anything that starts with "comic" and is (eventually) followed by "xo" which is also (eventually) followed by a "4".

At the absolute minimum, this search could match "comicxo4". It could also match "Comic XO 2008 Vol 24" or "Comic XO 2thousand ten Vol.41" or any number of other strings.
<pre>"comic aun" -2007 -2008</pre>
For a default search including both titles and [[tags]], this will match anything that has "comic" followed by a space followed by "aun" (the exact quoted string) in the tags or in the title but that '''doesn't also have''' "2007" or "2008" in the tags or in the title.

The matches for "comic aun" and "2007" or "2008" do not both have to occur in the title or in the tags; if "comic aun" is a [[tag]] on a gallery that has "2008" in the title, that gallery would not show up in the results of this search.
<pre>comic -"comic aun*2008"</pre>
This will match anything that has "comic" in the tags or in the title but that '''doesn't also have''' "comic" followed by a space followed by "aun" (eventually) followed by "2008" in the tags or in the title.

==Search Limitations & Quirks==
There are a few miscellaneous limitations to searches.
*Any term under 3 characters - besides "[[3d]]" - will be ignored unless a [[namespace]] is specified.
**Technically, "characters" is <span title="Bytes would be more accurate; the issue is how many bytes are needed to search with UTF-8 encoding." style="border-bottom:1px dotted">not entirely accurate</span>, but the main consequence of this technicality is that it ''is'' possible to search single characters from East Asian languages (such as Japanese).
*A maximum of 8 terms will be used to search.  Any extra terms will be ignored.
*Searches with only exclusions are not permitted.
*If [[tag]] searching is enabled, common terms such as "the" will be ignored unless they are made part of a larger term (either by using quotes or a wildcard character).

There are also a couple of quirks that may cause unexpected results.
*Title matches effectively perform as if the English title and the Japanese title were part of the same single string.
**This means that a gallery with the English title "2004 Book" and the Japanese title "2004本" would be returned as a match for the search ''book*2004'', even though neither title, taken alone, actually matches that search.  (''book?2004'' would also work, but ''book2004'' would not.)
*Certain Unicode characters are not processed well by the search engine, possibly returning a match for the wrong character<sup>[http://forums.e-hentai.org/index.php?s=&showtopic=113469&view=findpost&p=2448491]</sup>.  This is mostly only a problem if a search term is only a single character, since two or more characters together will generally have less chance of making a wrong match.

===Title vs Tag Matches===
The search engine finds matches differently for gallery titles and for tags.

For titles, the search engine may attempt a match anywhere, even in the middle of a word.
*So a search for ''berry'' could match a title "Berry Blue" or "Strawberry".
For tags, the search engine will only attempt a match on the whole tag (from the start of the tag) or on a word in the tag (from the beginning of the word).
*So a search for ''berry'' could match a tag "berry blue", but not "strawberry".
*A search for ''I*berry'' or ''st*berry'' would match the tag [[i my me strawberry eggs|I My Me Strawberry Eggs]], because the former matches the whole tag and the latter matches a word in the tag; but the search ''my*berry'' would not, since that string cannot match the whole tag or an individual word.

==Advanced Options==
;Search Gallery Name
:Enabled by default.
;Search Gallery [[Tagging|Tags]]
:Enabled by default.
;Search Description
:Enables searching the text of descriptions made by the galleries' uploaders.
;Search Uploader Name
;'''Search [[EHTracker|Torrent]] Filenames'''
;'''Only Show Galleries With Torrents'''
;Search Low-Power [[Tags]]
:(Only works when '''Search Gallery Tagging''' is also enabled.)
:Enables searching tags that have less than 10 [[mod power]], but still more than 0.
;Search Downvoted [[Tags]]
:(Only works when '''Search Gallery Tagging''' is also enabled.)
:Enables searching tags that have less than 10 [[mod power]], including those that have been suppressed by downvotes.
;'''Show Expunged Galleries'''
:Enables searching [[Expunging|expunged]] galleries. This does NOT enable the searching of removed, [[Gallery_Categories#Private|private]], or deleted galleries.
;Minimum [[Rating]]
:Enables searches for galleries that have a minimum star rating (2-5).

==File Search==
The file search interface allows users to find galleries containing images that match or are similar to a given image.  Users must upload a file to search from their computer, and only 1 file can be searched at a time.  The uploaded file does NOT get stored on the servers.  After the initial file search, results may be further filtered by way of a bare-bones search interface.

Searches for exact image matches operate by taking the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHA-1 SHA-1] hash of the uploaded file and comparing it to the database of all images in the [[E-Hentai Galleries]].  Monotone (i.e., usually black and white) images can only be searched for by exact match and will not work with the similarity scan search option.

===File Search Options===
;Use Similarity Scan
:Enabled by default.
:Searches for non-exact matches, typically of different resolutions, sharpness, or quality.
:Only works for non-monotone images.
;Only Search Covers
:Will only compare the uploaded image to the first image in galleries.
;Show Expunged
:Enables searching [[Expunging|expunged]] galleries' images. This does NOT enable searching of removed, [[Gallery_Categories#Private|private]], or deleted galleries' images.

===Search by Hash with URL===
It is also possible to directly search for a known [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHA-1 SHA-1] hash without actually uploading an image through the file search interface, if so desired.

Simply substitute the hash value into the end of the URL shown below.
<pre<includeonly></includeonly> style="overflow: auto;{{{style|}}}">http://g.e-hentai.org/?f_shash='''Sha-1_Hash_Here'''</pre>

==See also==
*[[Making Requests]]
*[http://forums.e-hentai.org/index.php?showtopic=19754 How To Search For Galleries]

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[[Category:E-Hentai Galleries]]