How to Query for Terms Like ‘@foo’ with Postgres Full Text Search

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I would like to be able to query for documents containing @foo without matching the naked word foo. I'm using the simple dictionary but I notice @ characters are stripped:

SELECT to_tsquery('simple', '@foo');  -- produces 'foo'

Is there a way to force Postgres to treat the @ as significant?

Best Answer

The problem is the default text parser, in that it splits out the '@' symbol

You can see it here:

select 
  ts_lexize('simple', '@foo'), -- {@foo}
  ts_parse('default', '@foo'); -- { (12,@), (1,foo) }

lexize is fine and keeps the @, but the parser splits it out

You'd need to write your own parser or change the source, which isn't fun if you don't know C!

One work-around would be to change @foo to something like ATSYMBOLfoo using some wrapper function for to_tsvector and plainto_tsquery

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