You can use and combine different search operators and wildcards in your search queries:

Wildcard searches

To perform a single character wildcard search use the "?" symbol.

To perform a multiple character wildcard search use the "*" symbol.

Unknown or all parts with *

Multiple character wildcard searches with * looks for 0 or more characters.

So
corrupt*
will find corrupt, corruption, corrupted ...

*rupt
will find corrupt or interrupt but wont find corruption or interruption...

*rupt*
will find corrupt, corruption, interrupt and interruption ...

You can also use the wildcard searches in the middle of a term:
co*upt
will find corupt or corrupt

Single character wildcard

The single character wildcard search looks for terms that match that with the single character replaced.

For example, to search for "text" or "test" you can use the search:
te?t

Boolean operators

Boolean operators allow terms to be combined through logic operators. Lucene supports AND, "+", OR, NOT and "-" as Boolean operators(Note: Boolean operators must be ALL CAPS).

AND

search engine
will find all documents which contains the word engine AND the word search

search AND engine
would return the same results

OR

search OR research
will find all documents which contains the word search or the word research

Exclusion with - or NOT

The "-" or prohibit operator excludes documents that contain the term after the "-" symbol:

search -engine
or
search NOT engine
or
search AND NOT engine

will find all documents which contain the word search and do not contain the word engine

Phrase searches

Phrase search with double quotes

A Phrase is a group of words surrounded by double quotes such as
"search engine"
which will find exactly this phrase and will not find i search an engine

Fuzzy searches

Fuzzy search with ~

To do a fuzzy search use the tilde, "~", symbol at the end of a single word / term

For example to search for a term similar in spelling to "roam" use the fuzzy search:

roam~

This search will find terms like foam and roams.

similar~ words~
would find not only similar words but similer works, too because both words are set to fuzzy search.

Usefull if you want to consider typos in the documents or if some documents are images or scanned documents (like PDF documents containing scanned pages only in graphical formats instead of digital text), so you maybe find more documents for your query even if the results of automated text-recognition (OCR) are not perfect)

Grouping

Combine criterias with OR, AND and parentheses

You can use parentheses to group clauses to form sub queries:

(search OR research) AND (engine OR software)
will find:

• documents containing the words search and engine
• documents containing the words search and software
• documents containing the words research and engine
• documents containing the words research and software
• documents containing the words search and research and software and engine

But it wont find a document containing the words search and research without at least one of the words engine or software.

Only one of the two last words would be enough, because connected with OR, but one of them is absolutelly neccecary because this criteria combination (connected by parantheses) is connected with AND