The following options apply to searches performed on flashcardexchange.com and on many mobile applications that work with Flashcard Exchange. Specifically, searches apply to the title and description fields of card sets.

Phrase Search

You can use quotation marks to search for a phrase:

"basic math"

This will find card sets that contain the term 'basic' followed by 'math'.

Excluding Terms (filtering)

To specify one or more words you'd like to exclude, use a minus sign to negate them.

math -addition

This search will find card sets that contain 'math' but not 'addition'.

"OR" Searches

By default, every term in your search must match unless it is excluded with the minus sign (see above). You can specify a list of terms that you want to find one or more of (instead of ALL of them) using a "pipe" character '|' like this:

math | reading

This search looks for card sets that contain 'math' or 'reading' (or both).

Grouping

Finally, you can group terms together in parenthesis when queries are complicated:

math (addition | subtraction) -division -multiplication

This search tries to find all card sets that contain 'math' and either 'addition' or 'subtraction' (or both) but do not contain 'division' or 'multiplication'.

Tags

You can filter results based on tags set by the flashcard authors. Prefix with "tag:" to search for specific tags.

atmosphere tag:climate tag:weather

This will find card sets matching "atmosphere" that have been tagged with "climate" and also tagged with "weather". To exclude tags add a dash before your phrase. tag:climate -tag:weather will show you card sets that have been tagged with climate but not weather.

User Searching

Results can be filtered by the user name of the flashcard author. Prefix your expression with "user:" to search for a specific user.

user:sensei tag:organic

This will find card sets from sensei that have been tagged with "organic". To exclude a user from your search add a tash to the identifier. -user:sensei will exclude this users flashcards from your results.