MySQL: MATCH AGAINST and LIKE

[BASHERS33]

If I am performing a search for short varchar fields wouldn't it be best to use LIKE rather than match against? What are reasons for one vs. the other? LIKE doesn't restrict on characters and doesn't force the search term to be an exact word and I assume for short fields data LIKE would be fine?

I never figured out how to do proper searches to begin with such as using + and - and in the example of MATCH AGAINST I have... well if you flip the words and search it will give no results wheras on search engine sites you can type them in any order for example.

[BASHERS33]

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[WingedPanther]

I did some research, but couldn't find enough about MATCH AGAINST to begin to help you. It is not the same as LIKE, I did learn that much.

[BASHERS33]

Yeah I don't know too much about it, but it's used by Invision for search functions (or it was in 2.3, I guess it still is) and then you're tied to the whole minimum of three characters and it searches for complete words.

In the past I think I was told that for short fields such as these varchar ones like is fine to use. Although it also wouldn't be as accurate in that it may return more irrelevant results. I dunno. I am going with like and going to get rid of the fulltext index I think.... and forget about match against for this particular program. I'm pretty sure that match against is used more for large fields, such as posts.