The underscore _
is a valid character in user names, but when searching users on stackoverflow.com/users, it is treated as a wildcard(!), not as a character. For example, when I type w_of__
in the search box, then not only the user shadow_of__soul
appears in the search results, but also, e.g, BiscutWoofington
. The user Wooff
is not shown, which makes sense since it's only 5 characters long and thus doesn't match the pattern w?of??
.
This leads me to the following questions:
- Is the above behaviour a bug or status-bydesign?
- Shouldn't
_
be treated as a normal character, and?
be used as a wildcard instead? - What characters other than letters and digits are allowed in user names? So far I found spaces and
. - ' _
.
(Some testing indicates that underscores are treated just like letters and digits in comment notifications.)