When you enter a search term in lowercase, it will match words in both lowercase and uppercase.

When you enter a search term that contains all or a portion of the word in uppercase, it will match words exactly as you typed them.

Use appropriate uppercase and/or quotes to search for an exact match. Using quotes around lengthy text (for example, "compiling and running a simple program") can greatly reduce the results. However, because this method is so restrictive, it may also produce no search results.

Search commands have a simple query syntax that provides Boolean logic without the need to remember complex queries. The following table displays the search operators and their Boolean equivalents.

Suppose you wanted to find versions of the Java 2 Platform other than the Standard Edition. You can specify this query as follows.

Sometime finding what you are looking for takes more than one try. To make your search more effective, review the following suggestions:

Be specific: Try using words that are unique or try adding descriptive words. For example, a search for "certification" can list results that include professional certification, application certification, driver certification, and the use of security certificates. If you are interested in driver certification, add that term. Optionally, you can also exclude other terms, by entering a minus in front of them, such as in "-education".

Try using alternate terms and capitalization: If you are interested in the Java class for time or date, try using Time or Date. If you know that Date and Time are Java classes, you can also enter that information, such as "Class Date" or "Class Time".

Synonyms can help too. For example, writers may refer to JDK versions using many related acronyms, such as J2SE, J2SDK, Java 2 SDK, and the like.

In general, many search engines do not recognize special characters because these may slow down search performance significantly.

Sun is in the process of making special character search available for certain characters that frequently are used in programming.

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