[OSM-talk] name finder: "pubs near Cambridge"

Andy Street mail at andystreet.me.uk
Thu May 24 14:39:32 BST 2007


On Thu, 2007-05-24 at 14:02 +0100, David Earl wrote:
> > > 4. The word 'near'(*) is equivalent to a comma: this is just syntactic
> > > sugar, but it reads more naturally in some cases.
> >
> > Is it possible to add "in" too? Someone organising a night out is
> > probably more likely to search for "pubs in Portsmouth" than "pubs near
> > Portsmouth".
> 
> 
> I thought about that but decided not to because
> 
> (a) I have no way of saying something is 'in' somewhere (I wish I did). It's
> all proximity. 'pubs in oxford' would yield pubs that aren't actually 'in'
> Oxford, just near.

I don't think people would mind getting results from the surrounding
area. I just checked Google and Live.com both will return results
outside of the requested city.

> (b) 'in' appears in place names in lower case ('Hampton in Arden'), while
> 'near' rarely does.

Fair enough, it isn't worth trying if it is going to cause problems.

Regards,

Andy





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