Search admin: how to include 3-letter terms?

[gwideman]

Hi all,

On an SMF forum that I frequent, many discussions involve acronyms, many of which are three letters long. When searching a forum topic (ie: thread), search doesn't find 3-letter terms, though 4-letter and above are fine.  Yet I notice here at the SMF forum, searching for "SMF" does work, so this must be a variable somewhere!

So, is there an admin setting somewhere to allow 3-letter terms?

Thanks!

-- Graham

[Sir Osis of Liver]

1.1.19 will search 1 letter.  2.0.7 requires 2 letters minimum.  If there's a setting for this, I've never seen it.

[gwideman]

A bit more on this issue:

I now find that the fail-on-3-character terms seems to apply only to the search function for a topic (thread), but not to the whole-site search. I can't test that in the Simple Machines forum, because that function appears disabled.

So, the site of interest is hxxp:www.eevblog.com/forum [nonactive]

When you navigate into a topic, above the Author... Topic:xxx bar appears some buttons for functions that apply to this topic. If not logged in, you get Print and Search buttons (just below the <<Previous next >> links).

It is that Search button whose search panel isn't able to find 3-letter terms.

This topic Search button doesn't appear here at the Simple Machines forum, so can't test what it does here.

Given that the whole-site search does return hits for 3-char terms, I'm starting to think that the no-3-char-hits behavior for the topic search may be a bug.

Thoughts?

[Kindred]

ummm.... not sure what you mean.

searching the individual topic for a three letter term works just fine here.

I just searched this topic for the term "sea".

[gwideman]

ummm.... not sure what you mean.

searching the individual topic for a three letter term works just fine here.

I just searched this topic for the term "sea".

Kindred: I can't figure out what you did. Are you saying that you used a Search button that pertains to just one topic? If so, where on the page is that button located?

Or are you saying you used your browser's search function? This seems more likely, since a forum Search function would not hit on partial words, and I don't believe the word "sea" appears on this page (whereas a browser search would find "sea" within the word  "search").  Anyhow, if that was what you mean, it's not what I'm talking about.

[Illori]

do you have a search index created? http://wiki.simplemachines.org/smf/SMF2.0:Search_(admin)#Search_Method if not you should create one [and use it]

[margarett]

Kindred: I can't figure out what you did. Are you saying that you used a Search button that pertains to just one topic? If so, where on the page is that button located?

Here we have something like this:
http://custom.simplemachines.org/mods/index.php?mod=1634
Installed here, which allows to limit the search, eg, to a topic.

[Kindred]

exactly... and using the topic only search, sea does indeed pull up any instance of sea, including in "sea"rch

[gwideman]

Thanks Margarett and Kindred for your responses. I now see what you are talking about on the SMF site.

Because the simplemachines site is equipped differently from the eevblog (though both use SMF 2.0.7), I had not noticed the multi-scope Search slot at the top right of the SMF page.  And indeed, that slot does find 3-letter search terms (or parts of words), as you say.

Regardless, I would appreciate if you would please visit the eevblog forum and note the behavior of the topic-specific Search button there (located above the Author...Topic bar).  Try this topic, which has lots of content :-) :

www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/sniffing-the-rigol%27s-internal-i2c-bus/

Three-letter terms that appear in the content but don't hit:  USB, MHz, I2C, RTC, MCU

Four-letter word that does hit: SPCI (and obviously it's easy to find other examples by looking on the page).

If there's a simple explanation for this behavior, like a setting (or it's from some broken add-on), it would be nice to know. If it's a bug, I will file a report.

Thanks,

-- Graham

[Kindred]

well, I went to that page... I used the search box at the top right...
I searched for USB and I got 12 pages of results (as expected, results were not limited to the topic...)

but - you are right...  the search button at the right of the topic start takes me to the advanced page and doesn't succeed...   which is strange

[Illori]

do you have a search index created? http://wiki.simplemachines.org/smf/SMF2.0:Search_(admin)#Search_Method if not you should create one [and use it]

[gwideman]

do you have a search index created? http://wiki.simplemachines.org/smf/SMF2.0:Search_(admin)#Search_Method if not you should create one [and use it]

Hi Illori,

I do not run the site myself, so I don't know the definitive answer. Given the size of the site and the speed of responses, it's hard for me to imagine that it's performing search by searching through records one-by-one in response to each search request. However, I will ask the site's owner.

-- Graham