Escaping Bracket [ in a CONTAINS() clause?

Question

How can I escape a bracket in a full-text SQL Server contains() query? I\'ve tried all the following, none of which work:

CONTAINS(crev.Raw         


        

Answer 1

Not in the spirit of fulltext indexing apparently.

word

Is a string of characters without spaces or punctuation.

phrase

Is one or more words with spaces between each word.

And

Punctuation is ignored. Therefore, CONTAINS(testing, "computer failure") matches a row with the value, "Where is my computer? Failure to find it would be expensive."

I'm not sure what your options are.

Obviously LIKE works fine:

SELECT *
FROM dbo.stackoverflow_319730
WHERE txtcol LIKE 'arg[ [ ]0]'

But

SELECT *
FROM dbo.stackoverflow_319730
WHERE CONTAINS(txtcol, '"arg[0]"')

Even matches a column with 'arg[1]' in it, for instance:

CREATE TABLE [dbo].[stackoverflow_319730](
    [id] [int] IDENTITY(1,1) NOT NULL,
    [txtcol] [text] NOT NULL,
 CONSTRAINT [PK_stackoverflow_319730] PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED 
(
    [id] ASC
)WITH (PAD_INDEX  = OFF, STATISTICS_NORECOMPUTE  = OFF, IGNORE_DUP_KEY = OFF, ALLOW_ROW_LOCKS  = ON, ALLOW_PAGE_LOCKS  = ON) ON [PRIMARY]
) ON [PRIMARY] TEXTIMAGE_ON [PRIMARY]

INSERT INTO [dbo].[stackoverflow_319730] (txtcol) VALUES ('arg[0]')
INSERT INTO [dbo].[stackoverflow_319730] (txtcol) VALUES ('arg[1]')
INSERT INTO [dbo].[stackoverflow_319730] (txtcol) VALUES ('some other text')
INSERT INTO [dbo].[stackoverflow_319730] (txtcol) VALUES ('arg[0], arg[1]')

EXEC sp_fulltext_catalog   'FTCatalog','create'
EXEC sp_fulltext_table     'stackoverflow_319730', 'create', 'FTCatalog', 'pk_stackoverflow_319730' 
EXEC sp_fulltext_column    'stackoverflow_319730', 'txtcol', 'add' 
EXEC sp_fulltext_table     'stackoverflow_319730','activate' 
EXEC sp_fulltext_catalog   'FTCatalog', 'start_full' 

SELECT *
FROM dbo.stackoverflow_319730
WHERE txtcol LIKE 'arg[ [ ]0]'

SELECT *
FROM dbo.stackoverflow_319730
WHERE CONTAINS(txtcol, '"arg[0]"')

With results which hint at the problem with punctuation:

id          txtcol
----------- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1           arg[0]

(1 row(s) affected)

id          txtcol
----------- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1           arg[0]
2           arg[1]
4           arg[0], arg[1]
Informational: The full-text search condition contained noise word(s).