Match spaces in search with underscores in text

Feature
1

When I searched for "enable local logins via email" (a site setting) an hour ago, I was surprised not to find a single post. Now I noticed that there actually are some posts containing enable_local_logins_via_email.

How about having search interpret spaces in a search term also as underscores, i.e. to return posts with enable_local_logins_via_email in a search for "enable local logins via email"?

8 Likes
2

Agree this will make searching for site settings much easier pr-welcome

5 Likes
3

I have added this feature https://github.com/discourse/discourse/pull/5690

I figured out that underscores are not escaped in exact term when searching "enable_local_logins_via_email", so it already matches variations with different word sepataratos like enable local logins via email or enable+local+logins+via+email, I assume this is intended?
With the change I added, spaces in the exact search term match the text where any word separators are used, not only underscores.

7 Likes
4

Does it also work for mixed separators within the same search term? (though I’m not sure I can come up with a realistic example for that)

5

You mean if searching for "enable local logins via email" matches "enable+local_logins via-email"? It does.

4 Likes
6

While we’re at it, I think it might also help if the search term with all dashes eliminated would be treated as equivalent with the search term. What I mean is: a search for “multi-site” should find multisite as if I had searched for “multisite”.

7

Maja I think that PR is a bit confusing, the change is actually required here:

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image.png850Ă—390 24.9 KB

Not for global search on the site. This is where we hit the issue regularly.

3 Likes
8

I original thought @tophee was referring to the Site Settings too, but it turns out it already supports searching with spaces:

then I re-read the OP:

When I searched for "enable local logins via email" (a site setting) an hour ago, I was surprised not to find a single post.

which led me to believe it is actually referring to /search page.

8 Likes
9

I think we should just table this for now, I don’t feel the original request has much utility.

3 Likes
10

Agree with you here. Removing pr-welcome from this.

My bad, I did not fully understand the request here and got confused, thanks @xrav3nz and sorry @maja

4 Likes