Shotnest · Library
Search a symbol as literal text
A+B finds only the record Code A+B because the search reads every character literally; a dot or star is matched as itself, never as a pattern.
No pattern language in the query
Shotnest's search checks whether the normalized query appears inside the normalized record. Symbols such as +, ., * and ? are compared like letters. The query A+B therefore needs those three characters in that order, which Code A+B has and Code AB does not.
This is the opposite of a regular-expression search, where a dot means any character and a star means repeat. Add a third record, Code A.B, and the query A.B returns only that record. The query A*B returns nothing at all, because none of the records contains a star.
Normalization still runs before the comparison, so letter case and accents around a symbol are folded: a+b and Á+B both find Code A+B. Only the symbols themselves are kept as typed.
Try the original example
- Supplied records
- Code A+B — Code AB
- Query
- A+B
- Matching record numbers
- 1
Search for codes with punctuation
- Type the code with its symbols exactly as they appear on screen.
- If nothing is found, drop the symbol and search the letters on one side of it.
- Check the returned record for the exact punctuation before copying it.
- In the app, separate words with spaces: each word must appear, in any order.
- Query AB
- record 2 only
- Query A.B with Code A.B added
- record 3
- Query A*B
- no match
Symbol searches that surprise people
- AB does not find A+B, because the plus sits between the letters.
- Wildcards from other search boxes, such as * for anything, are matched as literal stars.
- Text recognition may read a symbol differently from how it looks, for example a hyphen as a dash; searching the letters around it is more robust.
- In the app, spaces split the query into words, so A + B looks for A, + and B separately and also matches text such as B+A.
Exact characters, exact responsibility
Because nothing is interpreted, a missing result usually means the characters differ. Look at the original image to see what the screen really showed.
When a symbol search fails in the app, the Text section of the detail view shows exactly what was recognised, which is the quickest way to see whether the plus sign was read as another character.