Understanding When Filters Are Accurate

When you use -directory_filter, -collection_filter, or -document_selector without -query_filter, the set of documents selected by mlcp exactly matches your filtering criteria.

The query you supply with -query_filter is used in an unfiltered search, which means there can be false positives among the selected documents. When you combine -query_filter with -directory_filter, -collection_filter, or -document_selector, mlcp might select documents that do not meet your directory, collection, or path filter criteria.

The interaction between -query_filter and the other filtering options is similar to the following. In this example, the search can match documents that are not in the “parts” collection.

-collection_filter parts 
-query_filter yourSerializedQuery
==> selects the documents to export similar to the following:
cts:search(
  fn:collection("parts"), 
  yourQuery, 
  ("unfiltered"))

For a complete example using -query_filter, see Example: Exporting Documents Matching a Query.

To learn more about the implications of unfiltered searches, see Fast Pagination and Unfiltered Searches in the Query Performance and Tuning Guide.