Special Character Search

EnrightMcC

I'm having difficulty searching for a right square bracket.
When I search for: [servername.net], it matches on [servername.net, 
I don't want that. I want the right square bracket to be part of the search.

Dan B

Thanks for taking the time to reply. Feedback like this is always useful for the support team to distribute around the business. You raise a couple issues so I will deal with them one at a time.

Shouldn't the real answer be "This is a free tool, and we're not going to pay developers to fix a product that we're not directly making money off of?"

Search is a free tool but we do have a team who work on it. Whilst they aren't dedicated to Search they do features and bug fixes. 

You can say it's working as designed, but that's putting lipstick on pig, so to speak. If you have a search feature and you can't use it to search for a literal string, then that's a bug. Ridiculous. 

It's working as designed but I think your point that the design is wrong is a fair one. The previous change was done so that we could meet the needs of another feature request. As you mention there is escape functionality in Search and this does use the square bracket. However, this would break in this case so the real fix to both issues is to get this working. Based on your feedback this has been added to the big board but that doesn't guarantee that a fix will be implemented. I will endeavour to keep you updated with the progress of this task.

Dan B

Hi EnrightMcC,

Thanks for posting on the Redgate forums.

I have replicated this issue and I will create a bug report with the dev team and come back to you as soon as possible.

EnrightMcC

Thanks!

Dan B

Hi EnrightMcC,

This is expected behaviour and was implemented in response to some other customers request to find objects with and without square brackets. We will be unable to change this feature.

Please do let me know if you need anything further.

EnrightMcC

Wow. that has to be the worse answer I've ever heard. And what about the users who need to find something with square brackets?  Not to mention every real search tool from regex on allows you to specify special characters when searching.  Either by placing the character in square brackets, i.e. []], or utilizing an escape character, i.e. \], or doubling the character, i.e. \].
For you to say this won't be fixed is the first time I've ever been dissatisfied with Red-Gate. Shouldn't the real answer be "This is a free tool, and we're not going to pay developers to fix a product that we're not directly making money off of?" You can say it's working as designed, but that's putting lipstick on pig, so to speak. If you have a search feature and you can't use it to search for a literal string, then that's a bug. Ridiculous. 

EnrightMcC

First of all, I apologize for my harsh reply.  I uncharacteristically replied out of emotion, under the stress of a very busy day. That's no excuse, but that's my reason.  You are correct, I consider this a bug, because of the design that I don't agree with. By setting up something to work for a subset of searches, but not work under others, I perceive as a problem. I believe there is a valid solution to allow both; and I'm pleased that Red Gate is putting it on the Big Board.  I hope it will get chosen; and thanks for your reply.
Regards,
EnrightMcC