# How to search for special characters like \`:=\`

**URL:** <https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-to-search-for-special-characters-like/47923>\
**Category:** Support\
**Created:** [7월 28, 2016, 3:15오후 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-to-search-for-special-characters-like/47923 "2016-07-28T15:15:35Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![pluranium](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/pluranium/32/58666_2.png) [@pluranium](https://meta.discourse.org/u/pluranium)\
**Post date:** [7월 28, 2016, 3:15오후 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-to-search-for-special-characters-like/47923/1 "2016-07-28T15:15:36Z")

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Hi - we use Discourse for our forum web site [http://forum.skookumscript.com/](http://forum.skookumscript.com/). It’s for a programming language, so users want to occasionally search for special characters sequences like `:=`. This does not seem to work. Also reducing the min search term length to 1 does not seem to help. Is there a way to search for special characters like that? Thanks!

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**Author:** ![elijah](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/elijah/32/104055_2.png) [@elijah](https://meta.discourse.org/u/elijah)\
**Post date:** [7월 28, 2016, 7:15오후 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-to-search-for-special-characters-like/47923/2 "2016-07-28T19:15:34Z")

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I haven’t looked at the way the indexes are done on Discourse, but it is very rare for search indexes to include special character sequences like that. And I’m willing to bet that any forum you use is going to have an indexed search instead of just a full text substring match.

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**Author:** ![codinghorror](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/codinghorror/32/110067_2.png) [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)\
**Post date:** [7월 28, 2016, 9:49오후 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-to-search-for-special-characters-like/47923/3 "2016-07-28T21:49:37Z")

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Special characters is an extremely difficult search scenario..

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**Author:** ![system](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/system/32/443519_2.png) [@system](https://meta.discourse.org/u/system)\
**Post date:** [2월 17, 2019, 10:05오후 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-to-search-for-special-characters-like/47923/4 "2019-02-17T22:05:17Z")

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**Author:** ![system](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/system/32/443519_2.png) [@system](https://meta.discourse.org/u/system)\
**Post date:** [3월 13, 2022, 10:41오전 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-to-search-for-special-characters-like/47923/5 "2022-03-13T10:41:25Z")

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