A comparison of representative ten online technical information retrieval systems which are currently operated in Japan, is carried out with regard to their special command expressions. There are three kinds of commands : i.e., search commands, output-related commands and supplementary commands. Of these, the most important class of commands is the search command, and three representative commands in this class are "stringsearch", "search" with searching term which is a set of data extracted from a specified field in the records already retrieved, and "search" with thesaurus terms, which covers all of the narrower terms automatically. The "stringsearch" is possible in ORBIT, QUESTEL, JOIS, INKA and InfoLine systems. The "search" using a set of data extracted from a specified field, can be used in DIALOG, ORBIT, QUESTEL and InfoLine systems. The automatic "search" for all narrower terms, can be done in JOIS, NEEDS-IR and INKA systems, and the automatic "search" with terms such as patent classification codes or faceted classification codes can be done in PATOLIS system. Moreover, the "search" with terms such as keyword codes or classification codes can be conducted in scanning the databases such as MEDLINE and EMBASE in which the automatic "search" for all narrower terms can be performed.
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