The search function

[stickandrudderman]

Isn't very good on this board, or is it just me?
A thread prompted me to type "kci" into the search box and I got "no results" but the very recent thread definitely contains these letters.
It's not the first time I've come across it but it's the first time I've tried it with such an unusual search term.

[66andBlue]

Three letters/digits is not enough for the search function on this site. I believe the minimum is five but I am not sure.
Try "kcigermany" and you'll get a page full of hits.

On ebay his/her last activity was about 6 months ago:
http://feedback.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewFeedback2&userid=kcigermany&ftab=AllFeedback

There is also a "karg" on ebay: http://feedback.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewFeedback2&userid=karg&ftab=AllFeedback&myworld=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2050430.m2531.l4585
but could be a different seller.

[Jonny B]

I am not sure what the distinction is for the name. I tried as little as two letters and got a mountain of hits with a generic combination, I just typed in "ab" without the quote marks on the main search tab and got pages and pages of hits. I tried the same with kc, kci, kcig, kcige, and got nothing. I tried using my own name and only got two hits with "jon" or even "jonn" but got a whole bunch when using "jonny" - when I did the search test all were typed in without the quote marks. If you use quote marks in the search function, it will only return an exact match, not the string of letters.
Not sure what is happening here, must be something related to the way search works with forum names??

I am going to send the above to Peter to see if he can provide some clarification.

Later addition - did you use the main search tab, or the one on the right hand side of the screen? See the Pagoda Notes article on the search function for more detail. But the search on the right, just below the date, limits the search to the section of the forum you are currently looking at, and not the whole forum database.

[stickandrudderman]

it doesn't matter where you put the entry, the result appears to be the same.

[Garry]

I just tried it at the Forum front page, that is I clicked on the’ Forum’ tab then used the search window.  When I put in KCI i got nothing, when I put in kicgermany I got a bundle of hits not using any quote marks.

Colin are you sure you are going right back to the front page and not just searching pages further down the chain?

Garry

[Peter van Es]

All

the database system prevents the number of letters for a "full-text" search to a minimum of 4, to prevent the system from overloading the database and killing the website. That is why you get no results with fewer than 4 characters. There are some other "tricks" to prevent this overloading from happening (we won't search for "the", for example). Queries and text is converted to lower case. Strings which look like SQL commands or which are typically used in SQL injection are also removed. This includes quote signs, question marks etc. etc.

If you want to find posts from specific forum members, use the "by user" box.



One final trick: if you go to the front page (http://www.sl113.org) and enter kci in that search box, we cleverly use Google to find items on our site!

Peter