search function doesn't quite work on NU-ILX2

It's a limitation of the MySQL searcher, which is treating it as a stopword. Also won't find three-letter terms, so hard to search for Wii threads.

idiot nintendo

Do we still have thread categories, or month groupings, on nu-ILX? Are they even still possible?

Yo Ken,

MySQL does a bunch of things with search to try and make it tractable, so for example, when you type 'and' you won't get a list of threads with the word 'and' in it. It also seems to do the same around short terms. Other than that, it works well and doesn't make the server go t**s up.

Is it possible, or desired, to restrict an ILX search to answers from the board that I'm currently on? Or does the search kinda work in a pan-board fashion?

There are two things that make the search as fast as it is:

- using a full text index on the thread title
- limiting the results to ten at a time

If I do it on a board by board basis, MySQL will pick the boardid index to narrow down the results and then perform a tablespace scan on that result set to find the thing you are looking for (it can only use one index, per table, per query). This is way too inefficient.

Alternatively, I filter the results once MySQL has queried them and got all results from all boards; however, this will lead to an indeterminate number of results at a time, and possibly none, with a next button (especially if you're looking for something on a small board). Of course I could up the limit to say 100, rather than ten, but then we're increasing the time to do the query.

It's all about efficiency, really, and I think the way it is now is the best for that. All through developing this, I've been able to find threads I'm looking for quite easily.

Oh it's not really a problem, I was just wondering.

Another search observation.

The search option which used to let you see a new answers board from x number of days ago, or from dd/mm/yy has been replaced by letting you see threads which ended on dd/mm/yy instead. So say I wanted to go and look at my birthday thread from a couple of years ago like the narcissistic soul I wanted to. I go and look up 18/12/05. I wouldn't find it because although it was active and on the new answers page, it ended, ooh, I don't know, some other date when people were done with telling me how great and/or old I was. (yes, I know I can do a search on happy birthday ailsa, I'm just making an example to show that asking people to guess when things were last posted on is kind of a really limited search option). I doubt any of the really date-specific threads (9/11, 7/7, Christmas threads, birthdays, etc) actually finished on a memorable day. Just seems a really odd function to have, that's all.

would it be possible to perhaps on the search results page, there can be a link there for something like

"can't find what you're looking for? search with this (______________)"

that will just do a (i dunno how the DB works but something like..) "select * from threads where threadtitle like '*word*'"

so that if the quicksearch doesn't work there's an opportunity to do a slower but more thorough search?

Wouldn't take many of those searches to pile the SQL into a wee heap, Ken.