core reference

• l2cs (converts Lucene syntax to Amazon CloudSearch syntax) — very little documentation here
  • Lucerne search syntax
  • CloudSearch search syntax
  • Whoosh search syntax
  • Whoosh, a library that L2CS is based on
    • [source]
    • "A hand-written query parser built on modular plug-ins. The default configuration implements a powerful fielded query language similar to Lucene's"
• reddit sourcecode
• initial setup for the AWS CloudSearch

personal findings

• single quotes
  • searching for title:'ham burger' only matches things that have both "ham" and "burger" in the title (compare to title:ham burger)
• single quotes, double quotes, and parens — they all work the same
  • The following queries return the exact same results:
    title:'ham burger'
    title:"ham burger"
    title:(ham burger)

• double quotes — these don't search for a phrase like in Google; rather, double-quotes mean the same thing that parens do (see the discussion above about single quotes, double quotes, and parens)
  • searching for "ham burger" matches this title: "Do you like green eggs and ham?" by big_burger