Fulltext Search doesn't find words < 4 characters.

[Grover]

Hi,

I must be forgetting something (learing the beta's for the first time), but how do I set it up so I can search on words with < 4 characters if I use FullText search? I switched my testboard to Fulltext search, but I can't search on words < 4 characters.

[TCM]

I don't belive it's possible. =/

[Grover]

Confused.

It's not possible? Serious? But I had a huge list of 3-character words inside VB 3.0.7 to let my members find these important words despite the 4-character limit. Now I want to use Fulltext Search, which I thought would find ANYTHING, but apparantly I am still stuck with this 4-character limit?

There's is no way then to include this list of 3-character words on my FullText searches? This is very unfortunate, because I have to switch back to the old system then.....

[TCM]

It's not possible? Serious? But I had a huge list of 3-character words inside VB 3.0.7 to let my members find these important words despite the 4-character limit. Now I want to use Fulltext Search, which I thought would find ANYTHING, but apparantly I am still stuck with this 4-character limit?

There's is no way then to include this list of 3-character words on my FullText searches? This is very unfortunate, because I have to switch back to the old system then.....

Well, I'm not 100% sure of this, but yea, as far as I know that's right.

[feldon23]

You will have to change the setting in one of MySQL's config files and then restart it.

[Grover]

You will have to change the setting in one of MySQL's config files and then restart it.

Right... I am on a shared server, like most people I guess, so I have no access to MySQL whatsoever. Do you know it's configured at minimum 4 characters by default? I guess so?

What do I do if I have no access to these settings and want to use Full Text Search and want to include those 3-character words I listed in my former Normal VB Search?

[Freddie Bingham]

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/fulltext-fine-tuning.html

The minimum and maximum length of words to be indexed is defined by the ft_min_word_len and ft_max_word_len system variables (available as of MySQL 4.0.0). See Section 5.3.3, “Server System Variables”. The default minimum value is four characters. The default maximum depends on your version of MySQL. If you change either value, you must rebuild your FULLTEXT indexes. For example, if you want three-character words to be searchable, you need to edit my.cnf (or my.ini on Windows systems) and set the ft_min_word_len variable by putting the following lines in an option file:

[mysqld]
ft_min_word_len=3

Then restart the server and rebuild your FULLTEXT indexes. Also note particularly the remarks regarding myisamchk in the instructions following this list.

[feldon23]

What do I do if I have no access to these settings and want to use Full Text Search and want to include those 3-character words I listed in my former Normal VB Search?

You've just described the impossible scenario.

[Steve Machol]

Added Freddie's post to my knowledgebase.

[Grover]

You've just described the impossible scenario.

Haha, this sentence made me laugh!

[freaky]

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/fu...ne-tuning.html

Mysql docs say to rebuild the FULLTEXT indexes after reducing the char count. It says to do this...

mysql> REPAIR TABLE tbl_name QUICK;

do we need to, and if so, which table?

[Marco van Herwaarden]

Out of my head this would only be the post & thread tables.

[Milez]

Out of my head this would only be the post & thread tables.

I really think the fulltext stuff should be documented better...especially considering 90% of vb admns will want to make the conversion.

[Wayne Luke]

I really think the fulltext stuff should be documented better...especially considering 90% of vb admns will want to make the conversion.

It is documented quite well in the MySQL Online Documentation.

I have added Freddie's information above to the manual entry on Search Type and included the link to the MySQL documentation.