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I ran a Stack Overflow search for [rspec][capybara] "with_text", expecting to find only results containing the phrase with_text. However, the first result is expected css "title" with text in capybara, which does not contain the phrase with_text.

It does contain with text, though.

Surely, as the quote marks are advertised as constraining to an exact match, it should match the exact string that's typed (case notwithstanding) and not mess around substituting spaces for underscores? Underscores are quite common in SO search terms…

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  • Are you certain that there are any exact match results? I tried writing a SEDE query to find the "correct answers" for testing. After taking forever and a half to execute, it came back with about 20 results, and none of the ones I spot-checked actually contained the exact phrase "with_text". So maybe the search is confusingly attempting to be helpful by guessing at close things you might want? That's my working theory, anyways.
    – SOLO
    Commented May 22, 2018 at 18:50
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    Those searches with symbols has been haunted for a long time, hence symbol hound ...
    – rene Mod
    Commented May 22, 2018 at 19:10
  • @SOLO Possibly, but I'd prefer to see a message in that case, rather than just a set of results that I have to click on to find they're not what I wanted. Maybe something like Amazon does: show the search terms with a strikethrough on the one that's being omitted?
    – John Y
    Commented May 23, 2018 at 7:14
  • That makes sense. The varying levels of hinting in the UI around here (sometimes you're told immediately you can't do a thing, other times you put a bunch of effort into something before you're told it's restricted) can be confusing. As for your specific issue, I did a bit more work after writing my first comment, and I'm just baffled. Using IoT as a test site, I'm getting proper handling of a search string containing underscores with no similar-but-inexact matches.
    – SOLO
    Commented May 23, 2018 at 13:07

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