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searching: Can not search short words (1, 2, or 3 letters)

JonathanCook

Well Known Member
This message is to ask if the Vansairforce.net search can be changed so that we can search for short words (words with 1, 2, or 3 letters. An example of a short word is 'RV7'. The search functionality will not allow you to search for RV7. Therefore, if your search is for 'brakes RV7' then the search will remove the word 'RV7' from the search criteria. I find when searching for things like part numbers and other things you simply can not search for them easily.
 
Morning, Jonathan!

The current minimum search value is '4' characters, so you could search for 'RV-7' but not 'RV7'. I'm hesitant to change it to anything shorter as it increases everything (database size, etc.). Searching for a one character value would make for a muddy search return (ex: 'a' or '7' would return literally tens of thousands of results.

b,d



from the help file (and why I'd like to keep it the default value of 4):

"The smaller this number is, the larger your search index, and conversely your database is going to be."


JonathanCook said:
This message is to ask if the Vansairforce.net search can be changed so that we can search for short words (words with 1, 2, or 3 letters. An example of a short word is 'RV7'. The search functionality will not allow you to search for RV7. Therefore, if your search is for 'brakes RV7' then the search will remove the word 'RV7' from the search criteria. I find when searching for things like part numbers and other things you simply can not search for them easily.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
admin said:
The current minimum search value is '4' characters, so you could search for 'RV-7' but not 'RV7'. I'm hesitant to change it to anything shorter as it increases everything (database size, etc.).

Doug,

I understand about resources, but it sure would be nice if the limit could be dropped from 4 characters to 3. Aviation is chock full of three-letter acronyms that are currently hard to search for. For example, I just tried to find "ELT" before I remembered that the site won't let me. :)

mcb
 
Agree. I've run into this issue a few times. I've seen other forum software that indexes 3-letter words, but drops the really common ones (and, the, for, etc.).
 
Database getting large???

Hi Doug,

Who told you that the data base would get too large by storing words of 2 and three letters? That is just not true. 36^2 = 936 words and 36^3 = 46,656 words. 47,592 may sound like a big number, but for a database it is small. Also, this is only the total potential number of words. The actual number would be very much smaller. Additionally, only the word is stored and then the page index is stored. The total size on a hard drive for all word combinations of 2 and 3 letter words is 143K. ((36^3)*3) + ((36^2)*2). Lastly, you have to store the indexes of each post. You currently have 68,641 post. If each post has five three letter words the total size for the index storage is 1.4M. (68641*5*4(using 32bits is 4 bytes to store the index))

I am not sure if this changes you position, but you should question where you received your information.
 
Fellas, there is a Google trick without having Doug modify his database.

Type in [XXX site:http://www.vansairforce.com/community/] to Google, with "XXX" being your search string. Remove the [] of course.


I understand about resources, but it sure would be nice if the limit could be dropped from 4 characters to 3. Aviation is chock full of three-letter acronyms that are currently hard to search for. For example, I just tried to find "ELT" before I remembered that the site won't let me. :)

If you want ELT results from the forums, here it is:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=ELT+site:http://www.vansairforce.com/community/&btnG=Search
 
Well, can't hurt to try. Search min. now '3' characters.

Just changed the minimum search to (3) characters. Let's see if it helps! Might take awhile to re-index.

b,
d

Davepar said:
Agree. I've run into this issue a few times. I've seen other forum software that indexes 3-letter words, but drops the really common ones (and, the, for, etc.).
 
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