The "+" character

[chrave43]

I am using version 6.0 build 1023, the asp version and if I do a search including the + character (one of the most popular products on the site is unfortunately called an "auto +" by the manufacturer) I get the following error:

Error category: Microsoft VBScript runtime
Error description: Unexpected quantifier
Location: search.asp, line 532

I have tried adding "+" to the synonyms list and changing it to "plus" and also tried adding it to the skipped words list but it doesn't work. I have tried searching on the support part of this site and it tells me that "+" is in the skipped word list. I cannot replicate this! At the very least I want the search to ignore the + character, but a better solution would be to make it read as "plus".

I am using iso-8859-1 and also tried UTF-8 but neither worked. I have also got disabling charset enforcing ticked as the results page contains asp code.

Go to http://www.shreddingmachines.co.uk/new and use the search box if you want to replicate the error (the error message will though just display a friendly error)

Chris

[chrave43]

Someone obviously tried to take a look at the problem this afternoon, but didn't go to the right url. The correct url is: http://www.shreddingmachines.co.uk/new/

Chris

[Ray]

I don't have access to an IIS test server at the moment (I'm out of town and away from our head office until next Monday) so I can't confirm if searching for "auto +" will trigger an error in the latest release. But it shouldn't, it should simply strip out the "+" and search only for "auto". Please let us know if you have modified "search.asp" in any way.

Having said that, the plus character ("+") is not a supported search term at the moment. It is more commonly expected as syntax for all search engines, along with "-" for exclusion searches (more details here) so you would rarely find it available as a searchable term. And no, it would not work as a synonym either for the same reason.

[chrave43]

Thanks Ray,

I haven't altered search.asp at all as it was the first search that I tried (being the most popular product).

Perhaps you could let me know once you've had a go on the asp test server.

As long as it doesn't throw a 500 error when people search for it (which they inevitably will) then it's not so much of a problem.

Chris

[chrave43]

Re

Hi Ray,

Did you get a chance to test this when you got back to the office?

Chris

[Ray]

Thanks for the reminder. I knew I forgot something!

I did just check on our IIS server using V6.0 build 1023 ASP, and could not reproduce the 500 error when you search with a "+" character in your query. I tried various combinations of "auto+", "auto +" and different minimum word length settings.

However, taking another look on your website, I notice that you now have a "searchresults.asp" page. This is presumably doing a server-side #include to "search.asp" as described here. If not, please tell us what it does. Even if it is, it might be important to see the code for this ASP page, because I suspect it is doing something to the parameters.

I tried creating a test page to include our search.asp and it also did not have any problem searching for "auto +".

Did you modify the "settings.asp" file or any of the .zdat files?

The error that I now see on your website is this:

An error has occured. Please hit the back button and try again. If this error persists then please call us on <phone number> and you can place your order over the telephone

This is naturally not an error from Zoom. It is a custom error setup in IIS7. For more information on where this error is set in your server configuration, see here:
http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/564/c...er-by-default/

Because this custom error is set, and the "Send Errors to Browser" setting is set to False, we do not know what the real error is (and it might have changed since we last looked at it).

I think the problem has something to do with the search query being handled by "searchresults.asp". It is somehow re-encoding it or manipulating it whether intentionally or otherwise.

If the problem still isn't apparent, zip up the relevant files ("searchresults.asp", "search.asp", "settings.asp" and all the .zdat files) and e-mail them to us.

[chrave43]

The error that people get is:

Microsoft VBScript Runtime, Unexpected Quantifier, location: new/search.asp line 532.

The error message you are seeing is just a standard friendly error message but everytime someone gets an error it e-mails it to me.

I have just been on the site to try to replicate the error and it now works correctly (I have added the + symbol to the list of words to ignore) and it successfully ignores the + (which I'm sure it didn't before).

The only thing I have done is delete all of the zoom files and replace them so maybe there was a problem with one of the files that happened during a large find and replace or something.

Will let you know if it happens again!

I do though have a request for a slight alteration to the synonyms section in that you should be able to create a synonym with a space in it. For example I want to turn "auto+" into "auto plus" rather than "autoplus"

Other than that a great product.

Chris

[Ray]

I have just been on the site to try to replicate the error and it now works correctly (I have added the + symbol to the list of words to ignore) and it successfully ignores the + (which I'm sure it didn't before).

It shouldn't be necessary. Might be interesting to see if this is still needed now that you've actually deleted all the search files and reindexed.

The only thing I have done is delete all of the zoom files and replace them so maybe there was a problem with one of the files that happened during a large find and replace or something.

This is a good bet. If you did do a mass search and replace on ASP files, and "search.asp" or "settings.asp" got modified, then this could very likely have broken the script functionality. Checking the filesizes and file dates (or a file compare) should confirm this, if you still have the non-working files sitting around.

I do though have a request for a slight alteration to the synonyms section in that you should be able to create a synonym with a space in it. For example I want to turn "auto+" into "auto plus" rather than "autoplus"

A synonym is (by definition) a single word. "auto plus" is a phrase. There's a distinction between words and phrases that is necessary when you work at a search engine level.

Given that this is a particular brand name for you, you might want to consider creating Recommended Links for it instead. You can create a recommended link for a phrase.