Re: problems with searches for 'c#' and 'c++' fulltext

[Jesse Morrow]

I think the answer is that it just can't be done yet with MySQL FULLTEXT searching because the + and # characters are not indexed. MySQL only indexes alphanumeric words with the addition of . and ' characters.

Two ways you might address the problem:

1) When you encounter such non-indexable words fall back to searching using basic LIKE 'c++' constructs. You will of course have to create extra indices on these columns to keep things fast.

2) Alternatively, and a lot more involved, you could create a special copy of the FULLTEXT columns that has such character sequences encoded as something that is searchable and then convert the users search string to match.

So, a contrived example would be to replace all 'c++' sequences with 'cpp' or 'c00' in a special column used just for searching. When the user types in 'c++' convert it to your encoded value before searching.

Best Luck,

Jesse Morrow