Documentation on search syntax for text fields seems to contradict itself

[jill.vieregge]

I'm studying for the ACP600 and am reading up on the syntax for searching text in JQL. On this page 

https://support.atlassian.com/jira-software-cloud/docs/search-syntax-for-text-fields/

it says

Query terms: Multiple terms can be combined together with Boolean operators to form a more complex query. If you combine multiple terms without specifying any Boolean operators, they will be joined using AND operators.

OR: The OR operator is the default conjunction operator. This means that if there is no Boolean operator between two terms, the OR operator is used.

I just want to double check since its seems somewhat contradictory. So if there's 2 terms without an operator the default is an OR; if there's more than 2 terms the default is an AND?

[Andy Heinzer · Accepted solution]

Hi all,

I see that you have stumbled upon a problem with our documentation.  We are actually tracking this bit of documentation confusion as a bug over in JRACLOUD-72541.  I believe what has happened is that this particular document has not be updated in a long time and from what I can see in the the current versions of Jira server and cloud, the OR operator is not the default conjunctive operator it is claimed to be in the documentation anymore.

I did some more digging and found JRACLOUD-5930 which would indicate that this used to work differently, but we changed this back in 2012.  Sorry we have not updated this document to reflect this change yet.  That's our fault.  I will push back to my content team and see if we can't get this updated.

When you are using the basic search for text fields, all query terms are being grouped together (effectively using AND).

Cheers,

Andy

[Matt Doar]

I'd doubt that is the case. The documentation is not clear, but I think they are talking about searches such as

summary ~ "foo bar"

which my understanding is that Jira looks for summary fields indexed under "foo" or under "bar". 

Then you can also do searches such as

summary  ~ "foo bar" AND "baz wombat"

which looks for issue summary fields with foo or bar, and also baz or wombat.

I suggest some experimentation and a suggestion at jira.atlassian.com for some clarification in that documentation. It's pretty old anyway

[Matt Doar]

But I may be wrong. Perhaps

summary ~ "foo bar"

really does return only issues with the text "foo bar" in the field