[Xapian-discuss] wildcards and prefix searches

[Olly Betts]

On Thu, Aug 21, 2008 at 12:12:30PM +1000, Donncha Redmond wrote:
> I'm using Xapian through acts_as_xapian and would like to know why  
> trailing wildcards do not work on prefix searches.
> 
> Specifically, I have a Merchant model with a Description field, mapped  
> to the prefix "desc".
> 
> If I then search for "desc:goods" I get 4 matches, but if I search for  
> "desc:goo*" I get 0.
> 
> However, when searching normal, non-prefixed fields, "goo*" would  
> return at least the same amount of matches as "goods".
> 
> Anyone know how I can configure Xapian to support trailing wildcards  
> on prefixes?

This should just work (and there's a C++ feature test for it:
qp_flag_wildcard2 in queryparsertest).

So I guess the issue is probably in acts_as_xapian (which you'd have to
ask Francis about) or Xapian's ruby bindings.

Can you supply a self-contained example which reproduces this?  Ideally
without acts_as_xapian being involved if it's for me to look as I know
nothing about ruby on rails.

Cheers,
    Olly