Single quote in search expression

ethompson · Post by **ethompson** » Mon Mar 19, 2001 3:09 pm

A lot of the searches on our system are across names. One problem is with names such as L'Anson or O'Brian. If the users searches on "Robert L'Anson" (with the quotes), the results don't contain that string. Yet, if someone searches for a name without any special characters, then it works correctly. What is occuring with the ' character, and how do I work around it? I tried making it into '', but that didn't seem to work.

Thanks,
Erick

Post by **John** » Mon Mar 19, 2001 3:46 pm

You probably want to include the single quote in your index expression, which in gw is done with the -k option. e.g. -k"[\alnum']{2,30}"

Post by **mark** » Mon Mar 19, 2001 4:16 pm

Also, you'll want to still include the non-' expression, so you'll need 2 -k options. And to reduce index time slightly you might want to use a different ' expression:
-k"[\alnum]{2,30}" -k"\alnum{1,30}>>'=\alnum{1,30}"
And don't forget to -unindex before -index so that the new expressions take.