Minimum Characters for Search?!?!?!

[Joel F.]

Can the minimum characters for searching be lowered to 2 or 3? When searching for something on say a L79, it is hard to find when the search term omits those 3 characters. Same for model year. A lot of people post with just the last 2 char of the year, so the search can't necessarily find their posts.

thanks!

[Gary C.]

Re: Minimum Characters for Search?!?!?!

Joel, believe this is discussed in the FAQ's. Use a wildcard such as * Gary....

[John W.]

Re: Minimum Characters for Search?!?!?!

Joel,

If you will refer to the FAQ there is an article on this very subject. You will have to look in the FAQ under General Forum Usage/Can I search forum?

At the bottom of that entry is a link to how to deal with the three letter word length.

[Scott S.]

Re: Minimum Characters for Search?!?!?!

Joel,

If you will refer to the FAQ there is an article on this very subject. You will have to look in the FAQ under General Forum Usage/Can I search forum?

At the bottom of that entry is a link to how to deal with the three letter word length.

Here is what the FAQ says:

Enter the words that you are interested in one at a time with a space between them. For instance Brakes 1962. Would return posts that contain both of the words Brakes and 1962. "Fuel Injection" would return only the phrase Fuel Injection.
Watch out for the question at the bottom Show Results as "Threads" or "Posts". Threads will return the entire thread if one post has your search term.

Wildcards are letters that can be substituted for other letters and will return more results. The * will replace any letter or group of letters or words. The % only replaces one letter. You could use it to fill in for a space between words. The * is more powerful but works better as a place holder in searching for words shorter than four characters. *FI*, or oil*.


The link at the end goes to another post with further info, saying:

In order to limit the load on the server you should not search on words less than four characters in length. If you need to find phrases with short words you can work around this.

You can't search on "Big Block" because "Big" has only three letters. You can substitute a percent sign (%) for the space and create a word that is 9 characters long. "Big%Block". This will work on any phrase that you might need to find. Be sure to include the " (quotation marks) for best results

For single words or acronyms with less than 4 characters you may need to use an * asteric. %FI doesn't work, but *FI does.


I just tried this, and *FI does not work. Here is the message received:

The search term you specified (*FI) is under the minimum word length (4) and therefore will not be found. Please make this term longer. If this term contains a wildcard, please make this term more specific.


Has something changed recently, so that asterisks (wildcards) no longer work as described?

[Gary C.]

Re: Minimum Characters for Search?!?!?!

Scott,

Nothing's changed. Minimum of four characters including the asterisk are required. That FAQ was written when the vBulletin software was first implemented.

Unfortunately, the vBulletin software search engine has limitations that we can't change.

Gary
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[Scott S.]

Re: Minimum Characters for Search?!?!?!

Scott,

Nothing's changed. Minimum of four characters including the asterisk are required. That FAQ was written when the vBulletin software was first implemented.

Unfortunately, the vBulletin software search engine has limitations that we can't change.

Gary
....

Thanks for the reply Gary.

I tried *FI* too (four characters including asterisks), gives me a similar message:

The search term you specified (*FI*) is under the minimum word length (4) and therefore will not be found. Please make this term longer. If this term contains a wildcard, please make this term more specific.

[Richard J.]

Re: Minimum Characters for Search?!?!?!

...the vBulletin software search engine has limitations that we can't change.
....

I'm not sure of all the features of vBulletin, but I do know that you are several version back from the current one. Perhaps an upgrade is in order?

[Gary C.]

Re: Minimum Characters for Search?!?!?!

Richard,

Upgrading the TDB vBulletin forum software is on our "To Do" list and close to the top. To Do list is long since there's 3 of us that maintain 8 IT systems with 34 applications for NCRS.

Thanks for using the TDB.

Gary
....