2007/1/29, Jean-Francois Dockes <<a href="mailto:jean-francois.dockes@wanadoo.fr">jean-francois.dockes@wanadoo.fr</a>>:<div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"> Mikkel Kamstrup Erlandsen writes: > 2007/1/29, Jean-Francois Dockes <<a href="mailto:jean-francois.dockes@wanadoo.fr">jean-francois.dockes@wanadoo.fr</a>>: > > > > Mikkel Kamstrup Erlandsen writes: > > > Hi All, > > > > > > I put together a first take on formalizing an end user search language. > > > > > > <a href="http://wiki.freedesktop.org/wiki/WasabiUserSearchLanguage"> http://wiki.freedesktop.org/wiki/WasabiUserSearchLanguage</a> > > > > - Which of OR and AND has priority ? (does (A AND B OR C) mean > >    ((A AND B) OR C) or (A AND (B OR C)) ? > > > I guess it is standard that AND takes precedence over OR, but maybe it makes > sense to reverse that in our case. Think of the case > type:audio hendrix OR beatles > > In this case I would assume the user wants "audio files matching hendrix or > beatles", and not "audio files matching hendrix, or anything that matches > beatles"... I think it is non-standard however...</blockquote><div> Thinking more about this operator precedence issue... What about || type:music jimi hendrix or beatles If OR had precedence over AND that search would not yield the expected results... Maybe a solution would be to simple put selectors completely out of logical scope with words and phrases. Always just AND them on to the expression. That way the search: || type:music jimi hendrix or beatles filetype:mp3 or filetype:ogg would give what is *probably* wanted... A totally other approach would be to have AND take precedence and use "," to separate expressions that should be ANDed together. Example: || type:music, jimi hendrix or beatles || type:music, jimi hendrix or beatles, filetype:mp3 or filetype:ogg The last example translates to: (type:music) AND ((jimi AND hendrix) OR beatles) AND (filetype:mp3 OR filetype:ogg) </div>I actually kinda like that. It keeps the conventional AND precedence and allows simple grouping of expressions. <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"> In our case, I think that you are right and that it makes more sense to have OR take precedence, this has my vote.</blockquote><div> Are you still of the same opinion? Cheers, Mikkel </div> </div>