This command has been overlooked, but could make searching much more effective. Currently we can either REQUIRE or EXCLUDE files that have a specified word or phrase (or words in proximity). This does not efficiently/effectively work in the following circumstance.
The word/phrase that the person is looking for is a subset of a larger word/phrase that is not relevant where both are in the same file.
The ability to IGNORE the larger phrase (instead of excluding files with that phrase) would greatly help "weed out" irrelevant files while not excluding relevant files.
From a logic/programming perspective, it seems an easy algorithm to add. In the parsing routine, one would add the uppercase command IGNORE. In the file searching routine, one would check each hit to see whether it was within the specified IGNORE word/phrase. If so, it would not count that hit.
Here is an easy concrete example. Lets assume all emails sent by one individual at a company have the "boilerplate" language stating, "The transmission of this email is confidential...." Now, the user wishes to search for email conversations regarding "confidential". One cannot exclude the boilerplate phrase or all the emails would be gone (no hits). Alternatively, the user could not narrow the search by just using the word confidential because all the emails containing the boilerplate language would appear.
I would enjoy hearing other viewpoints.
Cheers,
Scott
