Search character minimum


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The search function has a 4-character minimum for a search. I say we should move it down to 3 since many, many words have 3 letters.. AIM, LAN, etc.

Just a suggestion.

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You can't.. It has to do with an issue with MySQL.

I remember Timdorr saying something about this once... :unsure:

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You can't.. It has to do with an issue with MySQL.

Hmm, that's a bit strange. What if someone created a table which had, amongst others, a text field of length 2 (eg for storing initials) and wanted to do a simple SQL Select by that field, they'd be stuffed!

I think I'm gonna fire up MySQL and check this out myself...

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It's a MySQL configuration issue, we could decrease the limit, but at a major cost to search performance. By including 3 character words, the search index becomes MUCH larger. And because of this, it takes longre to search the index and get the results you need from it. it would essentially offset the benefit of using a FULLTEXT index in the first place (FULLTEXT is the type of index that allows you to search text quickly in a database).

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The News Search form is horrible, it says 3 characters but really requres 4 and it's very hard to go back to search again (it gets cached because the form page is the same .php script as the results)

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Searching 4 characters works fine here :/

Erm... I think you misunderstood, if you search for THREE characters, it says "Search string needs to be 3 characters or longer", it works with 4, just a documentation error.

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Erm... I think you misunderstood, if you search for THREE characters, it says "Search string needs to be 3 characters or longer", it works with 4, just a documentation error.

:pinch: Sorry about that, I guess I didn't read your post carefully :p

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