Search Utility Minimum String Length

Why is the search utility limited to searching words of length > 3?

Most forums are, Vbulletin that drives this forum definetely is.

Less than four characters in a search string would be ambiguous and give too many matches.

And yes we know that it can be awkward if you want to search for a 3 character file extension.

I run into a lot. Just search for '3D' anything. -David

I only bring up the point as I don't have this trouble on theSwamp - not trying to pitch the two against each other, but just wondered if it was an admin imposed restriction.

It's to do with the way search is handled by the database. Or more correctly the way it was designed. In order to enable 3 character strings, the database would grow exponentially and search would take much longer.

The workaround is to use the wildcard character as in *dwg*.

I understand that search is much improved in vB4. We'll see...

It's to do with the way search is handled by the database. Or more correctly the way it was designed. In order to enable 3 character strings, the database would grow exponentially and search would take much longer.

 

The workaround is to use the wildcard character as in *dwg*.

 

I understand that search is much improved in vB4. We'll see...

I understand, thanks David

Are we going to be upgrading to vB4 then?