Special Characters in Boolean Searching

[Eric Schorvitz]

I have successfully built a PHP/MySQL job board search engine that allows users to enter a Boolean search string. I parse it in PHP and send it to MySQL MATCH() AGAINST('' IN BOOLEAN MODE). Everything works great except for when a user enters the search string: C++

MySQL returns results (I should probably mention that ft_min_word_len=1 for my installation) but they are not correct. Nowhere in the documentation does it mention how to get MySQL to index special characters or to allow Boolean searching over special characters. I do not want to use LIKE or REGEXP to try to find these words especially since many users have C++ mixed into a full Boolean string, Eg. (C++ AND PHP) or (Java AND Oracle), and it would be difficult, if not impossible, to properly connect the BOOLEAN MODE with the LIKE or REGEXP. I have already tried escaping the plus signs with single and double backslashes. I get the same result set - which is wrong.

MATCH(...) AGAINST ('C++' IN BOOLEAN MODE)
MATCH(...) AGAINST ('"C++"' IN BOOLEAN MODE)
MATCH(...) AGAINST ('C\+\+' IN BOOLEAN MODE)
MATCH(...) AGAINST ('C\\+\\+' IN BOOLEAN MODE)
MATCH(...) AGAINST ('C+z+' IN BOOLEAN MODE) [yes, the z is supposed to be there]
All return the same incorrect result set.

Basically, my question is this: How do you get MySQL to index special characters and allow for BOOLEAN MODE searching of words/acronyms/etc with those special characters. Having this documented would probably save many hours for many developers.