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can't search for numbers (no numerical search)
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Description

FEATURE REQUEST MIGRATED FROM SOURCEFORGE:

Submitted By: Koyaanis Qatsi - koyaanisqatsi
Date Submitted: 2002-06-12 20:37

The search function has generally improved, but it
could improve even more, I think:

searching for "circle of confusion" yields no results.
if there are no results because of "of", maybe the
search should ignore the word and match results on
remaining terms. then it would have found what "circle
confusion" found, i.e. [[depth of field]]. (people are
used to google, which drops common words automatically)

some useful words have only two letters. e.g. "pi".

no raw numerical search turns up results. e.g.
"3.1428" or "8 1/2". I doubt that will be crucial, but
it would be nice to have the option.

Date: 2003-08-04 03:38
Sender: nobody
Logged In: NO

Oh man, don't scare me. First thing I thought when I saw
this bug title was that the Feds were after people's search
terms and browsing history. Maybe some privacy features
should be added to make sure that data isn't kept around.

Date: 2003-09-08 20:01
Sender: myreddice
Logged In: YES
user_id=861973

http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?
search=circle+of+confusion

http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?search=%
22circle+of+confusion%22

There are some results now. Pi is still an issue, though

Date: 2003-12-10 11:08
Sender: hashar
Logged In: YES
user_id=663115

Seems the feature is implemented now.

Only thing missing: searching for 3.14 or "3.14" or
"3.1415"
doen't found pi.


Version: unspecified
Severity: normal
URL: http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=568149&group_id=34373&atid=411195

Details

Reference
bz42

Event Timeline

bzimport raised the priority of this task from to Low.Nov 21 2014, 6:45 PM
bzimport added a project: MediaWiki-Search.
bzimport set Reference to bz42.
bzimport added a subscriber: Unknown Object (MLST).

wikimedia-bugzilla wrote:

Changed summary to reflect new half-fixed status.

bugzilla_wikipedia_org.to.jamesd wrote:

See this bug, which if implemented as suggested will break the ability to search
for pi with "3.14": http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=375

MediaZilla wrote:

attachment missing in source

  • Bug 9405 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
  • Bug 15229 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Here's an oldie but goodie... :)

This may be an issue with MySQL's stopword system; or it might simply be the default word length limit -- by default up to 3-charater words will be ignored. Or it might be ignoring numbers just for fun...

This definitely deserves some experimentation and workarounds if necessary; reasonable behavior of the search engine on a default install would be very nice.

reed wrote:

You mean this bug is *FOUR* years old???

Here's my "duplicate" bug report:

I couldn't find anything about this in the MediaWiki manual, or in Bugzilla, in
the Release Notes for 1.13, or in Google:

If I include a number (a numeral) in a search query, or a word that starts with
a number, I always get 0 results, even though I know I have pages that have
that number in them. For example, if I have a wiki page about 64-bit PC
architecture, I can search for "bit" and "pc" and "bit pc" and "pc bit" and see
the page in the results, but if I search for "64 bit" or "64bit" or "64bit PC"
or "64 bit architecture" or "pc 64 bit architecture" I always get 0 results.

reed wrote:

Note that it's not a word size issue, since I can find "PC" but not "64". Also I'm using Postgresql not mySQL.

Wikipedia doesn't have this problem, do they have a different search engine?

I've un-duped bug 15229 as PostgreSQL uses a different search backend from the MySQL default.

(Wikipedia also uses a different search engine.)

reed wrote:

Looks like WP uses Extension:MWSearch and Lucene right? So that would be a workaround for this bug and bug 15229? Are there any other search engines available other than Lucene and the basic SQL search?

Fix for bug 7726 takes care of this for the default MySQL backend. (Will be in 1.14.)

Bug 15229 presumably remains for PostgreSQL.