Help:Search shortcuts

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We strive to make search one of the primary modes of navigating through the content on the website. If you're using a computer (rather than a phone or tablet) there is a search bar at the top right of the page. With other devices such as phone or tablet, the search bar may appear at a somewhat different location in the page. As you type text into the search bar, the wiki automatically looks for completions and these appear in a drop-down menu. Only the first ten completions (lexicographically) appear at any given time, so if your completion doesn't immediately appear, it may well be because you haven't typed a sufficiently long string.

In addition to names of actual pages, the automatic completion also looks for redirect pages, i.e., pages that redirect to other pages. We've used this functionality to create a lot of shortcut techniques to finding pages that matter. Some of these are listed below.

Shorthand for technique Description of technique Cool further applications
SmallGroup Suppose you have found a group using GAP or Magma and found that its group ID (with the SmallGroup library) is [64,51]. However, you are not aware offhand of what the structure of the group is or what name it might have on the wiki. Type in SmallGroup(64,51) in the search bar and hit the enter key, and be redirected to the group with that GAP ID if the page exists on the wiki. Because of the auto-complete feature, you can really explore groups of a given order as you type. For instance, if you type in SmallGroup(8, into the bar, you get a drop-down with five options, from 1-5 for the second part. This tells you that there are (likely) five group of order 8.
information on groups of given order The full name of the page on groups of order n is "groups of order n", e.g., the full name for the page on groups of order 16 is groups of order 16. This can be a pain to type, and a waste of time. The good news is you can just type in "order n" -- for instance, order 16 will automatically redirect to groups of order 16. The number can also be specified as a prime power or product of prime powers, so in fact order 3^3 redirects to groups of order 27 and order 2^3.3 and order 3.2^3 both redirect to groups of order 24. In addition, you are also prompted to pages with more specific information -- for instance, order 8 irreps and order 2^3 irreps both redirect to linear representation theory of groups of order 8.
group shorthand We support most of the shorthands for groups -- for instance, both C2 and Z2 redirect to cyclic group:Z2 -- the cyclic group of order two. Both SD16 and QD16 redirect to semidihedral group:SD16. S5 redirects to symmetric group:S5. In cases where a shorthand is highly ambiguous, we suggest multiple completions and/or send you to a disambiguation page, e.g. with F2. In addition to the groups, you also get suggestions for pages with more specific information about the groups. For instance, after you type D8 in the search bar, you are given numerous suggestions such as D8 automorphisms (redirects to endomorphism structure of dihedral group:D8), D8 center (redirects to center of dihedral group:D8) and many more. This allows you to very quickly get to the page with the very specific information that you want.