# ? .!= --- looking up symbols/shortcuts in the documentation

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/looking-up-symbols-shortcuts-in-the-documentation/11849>\
**Category:** New to Julia\
**Created:** [June 21, 2018, 10:37am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/looking-up-symbols-shortcuts-in-the-documentation/11849 "2018-06-21T10:37:27Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 6\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![johann.spies](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/johann.spies/32/8805_2.png) [@johann.spies](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/johann.spies)\
**Post date:** [June 21, 2018, 10:37am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/looking-up-symbols-shortcuts-in-the-documentation/11849/1 "2018-06-21T10:37:28Z")

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While reading code of other programmers I often comes across symbols and syntax that I do not understand and that is (at least for me) not easy to find in the documentation. Here are three examples from the JuliaDBMeta-documentation:

```julia
@transform_vec t {:a .+ 1}
@with t :b .= :b .* string.(:a)
@where_vec t (:a .>= 2) .& (:b .!= "y")

```

In each of these lines a period (‘.’) were used with either + or \> or !=.

```julia
help?> .+
search: .+

  No documentation found.

  Base.:.+ is a Function.

  # 1 method for generic function "(::#717)":
  (::Base.##717#718)(a, b) in Base at deprecated.jl:354

```

So how can I learn from the documentation what the difference between

```julia
+

```

and

```julia
.+

```

is if I cannot look it up in some index or keyword search?

---

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**Author:** ![Tamas\_Papp](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/tamas_papp/32/25949_2.png) [@Tamas\_Papp](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Tamas_Papp)\
**Post date:** [June 21, 2018, 10:41am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/looking-up-symbols-shortcuts-in-the-documentation/11849/2 "2018-06-21T10:41:23Z")

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The `.` is a basic syntactic building block for [broadcasting](https://docs.julialang.org/en/latest/manual/functions/#man-vectorized-1), not an operator itself; it just makes functions (eg `+`) broadcast. See the manual.

---

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**Author:** ![johann.spies](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/johann.spies/32/8805_2.png) [@johann.spies](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/johann.spies)\
**Post date:** [June 21, 2018, 10:44am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/looking-up-symbols-shortcuts-in-the-documentation/11849/3 "2018-06-21T10:44:57Z")

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Thanks that helps with this immediate problem. But that illustrates my problem. I did not know what to search for in the documentation.

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**Author:** ![Tamas\_Papp](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/tamas_papp/32/25949_2.png) [@Tamas\_Papp](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Tamas_Papp)\
**Post date:** [June 21, 2018, 11:05am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/looking-up-symbols-shortcuts-in-the-documentation/11849/4 "2018-06-21T11:05:10Z")

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While the interactive help system (`?`, `apropos`) is extremely useful, it is a complement, not a substitute, to reading the manual.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![rdeits](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/rdeits/32/286_2.png) [@rdeits](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/rdeits)\
**Post date:** [June 21, 2018, 12:13pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/looking-up-symbols-shortcuts-in-the-documentation/11849/5 "2018-06-21T12:13:14Z")

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I wonder if we could still make `?.+` work and give an explanation or at least a link to the part of the manual on broadcasting. Currently it just gives the (absent) documentation for the old deprecated version of that function, but that deprecation will be gone in 0.7.

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**Author:** ![rsrock](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/rsrock/32/115_2.png) [@rsrock](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/rsrock)\
**Post date:** [June 21, 2018, 4:12pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/looking-up-symbols-shortcuts-in-the-documentation/11849/6 "2018-06-21T16:12:06Z")

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Check out  
[https://docs.julialang.org/en/latest/base/punctuation/](https://docs.julialang.org/en/latest/base/punctuation/)