> Why isn't this just a proximity search?  (Sorry, if the beginning of this
> thread explained that.)

The issue is 'First Words in Field'.

If you did a FWiF search for "Gone with the Wind" you would expect to find
the title 'Gone with the Wind' BUT you currently wouldn't as this would be
encoded as:
title="Gone with the Wind *" and the trailing whitespace would make a non
match.  "Gone with the Wind*" would match 'Gone with the Windows' which is
wrong.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but you can't express FWiF using proximity as
there's no anchoring information in prox searches, and even if there was
you still run into the same problem of 'Wind*' vs 'Wind *' at the end.

I assume that meta characters are available anywhere within the term?
So you could say "Gone * Wind" to find strings matching "^Gone (.*) Wind$"
not just at the beginning and end which is what we've mostly talked
about.

So, I support a 'Mask zero or more words' meta character. (Or a word
boundary delimiting character)

Rob

> > Suppose we define a masking character meaning
> > "mask zero or more words" (as opposed to '*' which
> > means "mask zero or more characters")?
> >
> > Wouldn't that solve most of the  index problem?
> > It would take care of the "first word vs. first
> > character" problem, and also eliminate the need
> > for the "Word" indexes, meaning we would need only
> > one index for each field.
> >
> > If this seems to be a good idea, someone suggest a
> > character.  I can add this to the 105 proposal
> > (which is still out for comment, despite the fact
> > that the date has passed).
> >
> > --Ray
> >
>

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