Special Characters Search

Special characters - i.e., characters that are neither alphabetic or numeric - can perform a relevant role within the CoB platform search engine. Because they are part of the platform search syntax - which, in turn, relies on ElasticSearch's Query String syntax (opens new window) - , they have a special meaning when used inside the search box. Yet, we can only use them literally - without a special meaning - in a search query if we escape them whenever we use them. We escape a special character by inserting a backslash - \- before it.

WARNING

Please be aware that a syntax error preventing your query from running may occur in case you forget to escape these special characters.

The list of special characters include +, -, =, &&, ||, >, <, !, (, ), {, }, [, ], ^, ", ~, *, ?, :, \, and /.

WARNING

The characters < and > cannot be escaped at all. Thus, they can only be used to create a date-, numeric-, or string-based range (opens new window) with one side unbounded.

Examples: To search for the phrase one (any) answer we will have to escape ( and ), that is, we will have to write one \(any\) answer. If we need to search for N\/A, we'll have to write N\/A.

Steps:

1. Initially, we attempt to search for a query with a special character without escaping it.
2. We don't get any results.
3. Only after we insert a backslash - \ - before the character considered special does the search engine returns the results we expect.