Question

How do you escape a double quote character inside a MS SQL ‘contains’ function?

SELECT decision
FROM table 
WHERE CONTAINS(decision, '34" AND wide')

Normally contains() expects double quotes to surround an exact phrase to match, but I want to search for an actual double quote character. I’ve tried escaping it with \, `, and even another double quote, but none of that has worked.

P.S. I realize a simple example like this could also be done using the LIKE statement, but I need to use the fulltext search function. The query I provided here has been simplified from my actual query for example purposes.

Answer 1

From documentation:

Punctuation is ignored. Therefore, CONTAINS(testing, "computer failure") matches a row with the value, “Where is my computer? Failure to find it would be expensive.”

Since FULLTEXT does not even index the punctuation, you’ll need to fine-filter your results using LIKE:

SELECT  decision
FROM    table 
WHERE   CONTAINS(decision, '34 AND wide')
        AND decision LIKE '%34"%'

This will preserve the benefits of fulltext.