Search Function Question

[eponym]

Dear Numero Uno,

Something about the Advanced Search function has me scratching my head. I may be missing something simple, of course.

I was looking for a thread I remembered seeing in Tek Talk, with something like "Jon line" as the title. I couldn't find this thread with a titles-only search on "Jon" nor on "line" but finally found it by browsing the forum. (It's "Jon lines", #27935).

I can see why a search function wouldn't find "lines" using the keyword "line" (you don't have wildcards, do you?). But I was surprised to find (I tried several times) that searching with the single keyword "Jon" (or "jon"), on titles only, did not return any results. Especially since a titles-only search on the keyword "lines" will find the thread.

Best regards, and thanks for the ongoing improvements,
Bryan

PS I left the "Search Options" drop-down menus at their defaults, and I tried searching "All Open Forums" and again just searching "Tek Talk."

 

[Ted S]

Right now we are using a beta version the full text mysql searching system, while much faster than our old search it has limitations. Hopefully we can resolve them with a upgrade soon.

 

[eponym]

Understood, thanks.

 

[eponym]

And in case it helps your team when testing your upgrade, here's something I've discovered about the current search function (advanced search, search titles only).

Search won't return any results at all on a three-letter keyword search (jon, new, hit). But four-letter keyword searches work fine (padi, line, hits).

 

[Ted S]

MySQL full text searching (like most full text searching) ignores 3 letter words because of their abundance, hopefully we can find a way around this.

 

[eponym]

That's clear enough. Working around MySQL sounds like a challenge - you could just add a note to the keyword group in the search pane - "keywords must be at least 4 letters long"