Question

With MySQL Boolean Full-Text Searches…

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/fulltext-boolean.html

A leading minus sign indicates that
this word must not be present in any
of the rows that are returned.

Note: The – operator acts only to
exclude rows that are otherwise
matched by other search terms. Thus, a
boolean-mode search that contains only
terms preceded by – returns an empty
result. It does not return “all rows
except those containing any of the
excluded terms.”

Is there any way to do a search giving all rows except those that contain any of the excluded terms?

like (+* -blah -blah2)

Answer 1

No, but it would be equivalent to simply NOT the condition:

SELECT *
FROM foo
WHERE NOT MATCH (bar) AGAINST ('blah blah2')

of course such a query can’t possibly actually use the fulltext index for quick lookup.