A Mac user in Holland has discovered that limited Boolean searching is “hidden” in Spotlight. As you might expect, the syntax is as follows:

“lenin stalin” – as we all know – finds things containing lenin and stalin
“lenin|stalin” will find things mentioning lenin or stalin
“lenin|stalin(-trotsky)” will find things containing lenin or stalin but not mentioning trotsky.

Neat!

And, of course, it works in Apple Mail as well, where the search function uses the Spotlight technology.

Or you can use this syntax:

A & B yields A AND B
A | B yields A OR B
A ! B yields A NOT B.

See more at his blog, ipse dixit, and in the tip and comments at MacOSXHints.

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