Span queries

Span queries are low-level positional queries which provide expert control over the order and proximity of the specified terms. These are typically used to implement very specific queries on legal documents or patents.

It is only allowed to set boost on an outer span query. Compound span queries, like span_near, only use the list of matching spans of inner span queries in order to find their own spans, which they then use to produce a score. Scores are never computed on inner span queries, which is the reason why boosts are not allowed: they only influence the way scores are computed, not spans.

Span queries cannot be mixed with non-span queries (with the exception of the span_multi query).

The queries in this group are:

span_containing query: Accepts a list of span queries, but only returns those spans which also match a second span query.
span_field_masking query: Allows queries like span-near or span-or across different fields.
span_first query: Accepts another span query whose matches must appear within the first N positions of the field.
span_multi query: Wraps a term, range, prefix, wildcard, regexp, or fuzzy query.
span_near query: Accepts multiple span queries whose matches must be within the specified distance of each other, and possibly in the same order.
span_not query: Wraps another span query, and excludes any documents which match that query.
span_or query: Combines multiple span queries — returns documents which match any of the specified queries.
span_term query: The equivalent of the term query but for use with other span queries.
span_within query: The result from a single span query is returned as long is its span falls within the spans returned by a list of other span queries.

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