Being able to search 3 letter words in the search feature

[Bob the Angry Potato]

This has been bugging me-

Most things in Airsoft are 3 letters or less- for example, MP5, AUG, and many other assorted gun names- same with some companies. It makes searching a bit of a pain when we can't search anything 3 letters or less.

[starburst]

Just add a * to the end and it will search the term, bumps up the character count and forum search engines like this one ignor them as a wild card entry

[Angry]

Rather than start a new topic I might as well resurect this one.

 

I know all the tricks associated with trying to get the search engine working, but can't a list of obvious exceptions be created, so that the search engine would accept them?

[Aitch]

You do realise that would mean a lot of work for the people running any forum (seeing the option doesn't exist in IPB software, well I've never noticed it and I know IPB very well)

All it takes is for a user to click shift and 8 together twice at the end of their 3 letter search, Is that too much trouble ?

[Catman]

You do realise that would mean a lot of work for the people running any forum (seeing the option doesn't exist in IPB software, well I've never noticed it and I know IPB very well)

All it takes is for a user to click shift and 8 together twice at the end of their 3 letter search, Is that too much trouble ?

Problem is the * doesn't always return the correct results for various reasons. As for modifying the code that's not a biggie as there's just an IF statement blocking the search, for example (and in English):

 

X = 3

IF (length of search string is LESS THAN OR EQUAL to X) THEN
bounce user to "search string too short" error message
ELSE
action search
END of IF statement

 

X just needs changing to 2 or whatever, you get the gist

[Hedganian]

This thing with the stars is all well and good, but if I'm looking for threads concerning the Steyr AUG, and search for AUG** I get every thread with the word "august" in it, along with threads that I might be interested in. Which gives far, far too many matches, and makes the results useless.

[Stealthbomber]

This thing with the stars is all well and good, but if I'm looking for threads concerning the Steyr AUG, and search for AUG** I get every thread with the word "august" in it, along with threads that I might be interested in. Which gives far, far too many matches, and makes the results useless.

And you think that would get better or worse if 3 letter searches were allowed?

For example, if you typed "AUG" in the search box, it'd STILL return every instance of the word "August" anyway.

 

Basically, for every instance where a useful 3 letter search CAN be made ("MP5", "SL8" etc) then adding a "*" to the end of the search will allow it to happen.

[Hedganian]

Search for AUG should only return august if a wildcard is used. Otherwise it's a complete string, not part of a larger one.

[Stealthbomber]

Search for AUG should only return august if a wildcard is used. Otherwise it's a complete string, not part of a larger one.

Nope.

 

Pretty much every search engine in the world will find sequences of those letters regardless of if they're a complete word.

Try searching for "G3" in an airsoft shop, for example. Most of the results will be to do with the G36c.

I dunno if typing "<space>AUG<space>" would work.

[Chris North]

That's not true with this search though. For the heck of it, tried to search for "Tana" to see if any threads with "Tanaka" would come up. Only got one result: http://www.arniesairsoft.co.uk/forums/inde...455&hl=tana

 

Search for the full "Tanaka" and I don't get all of the results because they're limited to the first thousand (which is more than I'd look through).

 

However, searching for "Tana*" brings up pretty much the same results as "Tanaka."

 

Oddly enough though, when I previously tried searching for "AUG*" a few months ago, I only got results for "August" or "AUGs," not just "AUG."