We are looking into why it causes the difference. Putting the = first can be more efficient, as it can then avoid some of the work it will do in the metamorph index.
Just out of curiosity today I create an index using the exact same scripts/etc except of only the directmag content. On the off chance there was something indexed that was creating the problem.
Everything worked fine returning results. The verbose messages from what I can tell looked very similar too.
200 ptest:339: Setting pred Title\Keywords\Description\Content\MediaFileText Proximate To 'privacy' AND Sitedirname= directmag on ta
ble pbmmcorpus in the function settablepred
200 ptest:339: Looking for index on pbmmcorpus (Title\Keywords\Description\Content\MediaFileText)
200 ptest:339: Opening index /home/texis/ptest/db/xcorpus1 in the function ixfmmindex
200 ptest:339: openfdbi(/home/texis/ptest/db/xcorpus1, R, F) = 0x85FA5B8
200 ptest:339: mmap(/home/texis/ptest/db/xcorpus1.tok, 0x0, 0x18380, R) = 0x40283000
200 ptest:339: mmap()ing entire Metamorph index token file /home/texis/ptest/db/xcorpus1.tok in the function openfdbi
200 ptest:339: Can't mmap() Metamorph index data file /home/texis/ptest/db/xcorpus1.dat: (indexmmap & 2) off; using file I/O in the
function openfdbi
200 ptest:339: 1/2 privacist
200 ptest:339: 1/1 privacist's
200 ptest:339: 1/1 privacists
200 ptest:339: 12399/15362 privacy
200 ptest:339: allmatch: 1 and: 0 set: 1 not: 0 minsets: 1
200 ptest:339: kdbf_readchunk(0xC68AE8, 0x10000) = 0x10000
200 ptest:339: kdbf_nextblock(0xC68AE8, 0x10000) = 0xD201
200 ptest:339: Looking for index on pbmmcorpus (Sitedirname)
200 ptest:339: Opening index /home/texis/ptest/db/xcorpus2 in the function ixbtindex
200 ptest:339: Comparing records
200 ptest:339: Comparing records
200 ptest:339: Comparing records