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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-26T10:15:11+00:00

I have an SQLite database with a virtual table myTable created using FTS4, with

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I have an SQLite database with a virtual table “myTable” created using FTS4, with one column “myColumn” of text using | as a separating character.

I query this database with SELECT * FROM myTable WHERE myColumn MATCH 'out to'; and I’m getting hits with entries that look like "...out|to..." but with no “out to” substrings.

The same thing happens when I replace | with punctuation like ;. (Note the SQLite docs make explicit that you can’t use _ as a separating character.)

Why is that and how do I prevent this?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    FTS’s default tokenizer drops any punctuation from the indexed data, and also from your input query. It would find a match for a entry “… out to …” even if you query MATCH 'out/to'
    The solution to this is using phrase searches, MATCH '"out to"' . It won’t work if you wish to find those words in a record that does not have them in that order.

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