Question

I am using the following query:

SELECT 
  (SELECT COUNT(*) FROM blah
    WHERE MATCH(text) AGAINST ('c')
  ) as count1,
  (SELECT COUNT(*) FROM blah 
    WHERE text LIKE '% c %'
  ) as count2

This returns:

count1 count2
0      19

Why is that?

Note that ft_min_word_len is set as 1 and indexes have been rebuilt. Why is it not working? 😐

The field blah has strings such as “y c h g b g p q n g j f k t y u a w d v b e x c m”.

Answer 1

First, MySQL full-text search defaults to natural language mode. You need to use the IN BOOLEAN MODE keyword to switch to boolean mode, which supports the * operator.

Second, your full-text query finds entries that contain a word (of four or more letters and not in the stopword list) beginning with the letter c. Meanwhile, your LIKE query finds any entries that contain the letter c anywhere, even if it’s in the middle of a word.