Snowstorm description search modes

gistfile1.txt

There are 4 ways to search descriptions in snowstorm.

1. Standard

This is set by default. Standard search returns any descriptions matching or containing text specified in the term parameter. It is case insensitive. 
  e.g when searching term value "col", following descriptions are matched.
  Red colour
  Cold
  Ice cold
  
2. Whole word

This is to search descriptions matching the whole word which is different from above. Snowstorm might not return any results with term "col" because there is no match. However if you search "cold" for example, it will match Cold or Ice cold.

   
3. Wild card
Wild card search returns terms matching a wildcard pattern which is similar to Regex.
e.g If you use col* it could match
Colitis 
Columba
cold
Color wavelength

However you will find results returned are less than standard search with "col", because col* only searches for any descriptions starting with col and it will not include Ice cold or Red colour.

You could use an equivalent wild card pattern to do the same search but wild card and regex searches are quite expensive. 
   
4. Regex
Regex search is powerful and can do more than wildcard search. However please be aware that this is case sensitive while the other 3 searches are case insensitive. For example Col.* and col.* will return different results. To return all descriptions start with Col or col you can use (C|c)ol.*

Please note not all regex syntax is supported. Snowstorm uses Apache Lucene's regular expression syntax. You can find more details via https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/regexp-syntax.html