---
uid: Lucene.Net.Search.Spans
summary: *content
---


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The calculus of spans.

A span is a `<doc,startPosition,endPosition>` tuple.

The following span query operators are implemented: * A [SpanTermQuery](xref:Lucene.Net.Search.Spans.SpanTermQuery) matches all spans containing a particular [Term](xref:Lucene.Net.Index.Term). * A [SpanNearQuery](xref:Lucene.Net.Search.Spans.SpanNearQuery) matches spans which occur near one another, and can be used to implement things like phrase search (when constructed from <xref:Lucene.Net.Search.Spans.SpanTermQuery>s) and inter-phrase proximity (when constructed from other <xref:Lucene.Net.Search.Spans.SpanNearQuery>s). * A [SpanOrQuery](xref:Lucene.Net.Search.Spans.SpanOrQuery) merges spans from a number of other <xref:Lucene.Net.Search.Spans.SpanQuery>s. * A [SpanNotQuery](xref:Lucene.Net.Search.Spans.SpanNotQuery) removes spans matching one [SpanQuery](xref:Lucene.Net.Search.Spans.SpanQuery) which overlap (or comes near) another. This can be used, e.g., to implement within-paragraph search. * A [SpanFirstQuery](xref:Lucene.Net.Search.Spans.SpanFirstQuery) matches spans matching `q` whose end position is less than `n`. This can be used to constrain matches to the first part of the document. * A [SpanPositionRangeQuery](xref:Lucene.Net.Search.Spans.SpanPositionRangeQuery) is a more general form of SpanFirstQuery that can constrain matches to arbitrary portions of the document. In all cases, output spans are minimally inclusive. In other words, a span formed by matching a span in x and y starts at the lesser of the two starts and ends at the greater of the two ends. 

For example, a span query which matches "John Kerry" within ten
words of "George Bush" within the first 100 words of the document
could be constructed with:

    SpanQuery john   = new SpanTermQuery(new Term("content", "john"));
    SpanQuery kerry  = new SpanTermQuery(new Term("content", "kerry"));
    SpanQuery george = new SpanTermQuery(new Term("content", "george"));
    SpanQuery bush   = new SpanTermQuery(new Term("content", "bush"));

    SpanQuery johnKerry =
       new SpanNearQuery(new SpanQuery[] {john, kerry}, 0, true);

    SpanQuery georgeBush =
       new SpanNearQuery(new SpanQuery[] {george, bush}, 0, true);

    SpanQuery johnKerryNearGeorgeBush =
       new SpanNearQuery(new SpanQuery[] {johnKerry, georgeBush}, 10, false);

    SpanQuery johnKerryNearGeorgeBushAtStart =
       new SpanFirstQuery(johnKerryNearGeorgeBush, 100);

Span queries may be freely intermixed with other Lucene queries.
So, for example, the above query can be restricted to documents which
also use the word "iraq" with:

    Query query = new BooleanQuery();
    query.add(johnKerryNearGeorgeBushAtStart, true, false);
    query.add(new TermQuery("content", "iraq"), true, false);