Escaping AQS

Question

Does anyone know the correct way to escape special characters in AQS?

 

For example

 

folder:c:\Program Files

 

Potentially has 2 problems

 

1. The query is actually 2 terms - items in folder c:\Program AND items containing the word Files

2. The : after the C could imply that C is a property and that the query should match items where the value of it is \Program

 

I could try putting the bit that needs escaping in quotes e.g. folder:"C:\Program Files\" but this does not seem to work

 

For example if I index the Windows SDK a query for uispy in program files should return 4 results from the following query

 

store:file folder:"C:\Program Files\" name:uispy

 

But it actually returns none

 

Changing the query to

 

store:file folder:'C:\Program Files\' name:uispy

 

returns the correct 4 results, but is this correct? What happens if there is a ' in the folder name to search?

Answer 1

Hi,

As you have noticed, you can use doublequotes to tell AQS that a string should be used "as is". Singlequotes (apostrophes) have no particular meaning to AQS (so your second query above was actually interpreted as "search for 'C:\Program in the folder property and search for Files\' anywhere).
It's not obvious from what you write above why your original query is not succeeding as it looks like a correct query to me, assuming you indeed installed the files under "C:\Program Files". I take it the files are in the results if you remove the folder: restriction entirely?

To answer the question in the title though: there is presently no character escape mechanism in AQS, so searching for a doublequote character would present some problems.

Thanks,
-- J.