Topic: [Bug] wonky search results for terms starting in "wand"

Posted under Site Bug Reports & Feature Requests

Bug overview description.
1) Searching pics for wanda* or wanda_* will return only one page of results i.e. there are no links to access pages 2, 3 etc. It's possible to access those higher pages simply by editing the URL, however. I found a strange workaround: simply searching for these terms plus a bogus one, such as wanda* -aaaaa or wanda_* -aaaaa, will return a results page with links to further pages, as it should. Strangely, wande* works without a problem, but wand* does not, see next bug.

2) Searching pics for wand* has the links to pages 2, 3 etc. as normal, but returns far fewer results than it should (8 pages with 100 results each), but like before, using a bogus term fixes this, i.e. wand* -aaaaa will return 16 pages of 100 pics each for me.

3) Searching pics for wand_* brings up a different bug: the site brings up 0 results, yet 8 pages of 100 results each (my set number), all empty. Yet again, adding a bogus search term, like in wand_* -aaaaa fixes this bug, so no links to further empty pages appear.

What part(s) of the site page(s) are affected?
Pic search results pages.

What is the expected behavior?
wanda*, wanda_* and wand* should return results as intended, as wih all other terms. Also wand_* should bring up just an page saying no results were found.

What actual behavior is given instead?
1) wanda* or wanda_* return only the first page of results, with no links to pages 2, 3 etc.

2) wand* has links to all further pages but returns fewer results than it should.

3) wand_* returns 8 pages of "no results".

In all 3 cases, adding a bogus search term such as "-aaaaa" completely avoid the bugs.

Time of incident (if applicable).
n/a

Can you reproduce the bug every time?
Yes.

What steps did you take to replicate this bug?
Just searching for these terms yields the same results every time.

Errors or other messages returned (if any).
n/a

Edit: fixed a bracket for proper DText.

Updated by Furrin Gok

Confirmed. Yikes.

"May not work well when combined with other syntaxes."

Turns out it was the opposite!

Updated by anonymous

I've noticed similar with other wildcard searches - both the lack of results when used normally, and the fact that it gets fixed with a negated term included. It's not just wand* or what have you.

Updated by anonymous

A different but related bug I just found. May be common knowledge, but I only just noticed.

Searching a term with a wildcard while excluding one or more terms that fit the wildcard, e.g. shadow* -shadow_wolf -shadow, the excluded terms appear twice amongst the trending tags of the results page.

Clawdragons said:
I've noticed similar with other wildcard searches - both the lack of results when used normally, and the fact that it gets fixed with a negated term included. It's not just wand* or what have you.

Cursed words.

Updated by anonymous

Oh boy oh me, this bug. I'll have to do a bunch of work to fix this. Single term searches are treated as literals and the pagination is based on how many posts are attached to the tag. It's not just a problem with wand, it's a general problem with wildcard and single term searches. I'll see what I can do to fix this up without making the site fall apart.

Updated by anonymous

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