Ralph wrote:
>Okay, so I must have missed a decision while I was on vacation.
>Are all searches now word proximity searches?

Me too but I understand the problem as follows:

We have two basic types:
1: string search
2: word search

In string search (with string indexes) people are lazy and like to type only
"nature" and get all periodicals starting with the WORD nature (strings can
be long). Others want to type "nature" and they just mean nature. A normal
wild card sometimes does not help ("nature*" also finds natured and "nature
*" does not find "nature") so something special is needed. Comes in
"nature|". There is no love lost between string indexes and me but I
understand the point.

"First word" and "last word" anchors in word indexes are trivial to
implement and would push back use of string indexes a bit more. (Still I am
a bit against them, every extra has to prove its worth)

A "word" wild card for strings in general is less trivial than it looks.
Normally I would just use "a * b". The whole problem does not exist for word
indexes. (Until the worlds shouts for them I am against general word wild
cards)

Rob Koopman