Advanced search does not give me expected results

[snowshed]

So far, getting this posted has been frustrating...

I entered the following phrase, minus the quotes, into the keyword field of advanced search: "+a +b +c". As I understand the minimal instructions, all 3 words should be in any topic listed in the search. In my case, "a" was not found but too many messages containing the other two parameters were found.

Is this result correct?

Thanks.

[Hagar Delest]

I guess that if there is no match with all the 3 words, the query returns the hits with at least 2 words.

[snowshed]

I wonder if there's a programming mistake with the search engine. Everything I've learned about search says that all words or phrases with a plus sign must be in each of the results given.

[acknak]

It might help if you told us exactly what words you searched for.

The forum search is based on an index updated with each new post. It excludes all words with less than four characters, and some other words that are "too common". As far as I can tell, these exclusions are "silent" -- they are just dropped from the search with no warning or explanation.

The search is also literal: If you search for "window", you will not get any hits for posts containing "windows". You can get around that using wildcards: "window*".