MySQL fulltext does not search for short emails - mysql

Question

I have a fulltext index on a number of columns and i'm trying to do a MATCH AGAINST IN BOOLEAN MODE on those columns, trying to find an email address. Here are the results:
if i search for "test#email.com" (with quotes) - the query returns correct results
if i search for "a#b.com" (with quotes) - the query does not return anything
Can someone tell me why a short email a#b.com does not get returned and how would i solve this?
Here's the query i'm using:
SELECT MATCH(email, phone, title, description) AGAINST('"a#b.com"' IN BOOLEAN MODE) AS score
FROM thetable WHERE MATCH(email, phone, title, description)
AGAINST('"a#b.com"' IN BOOLEAN MODE) ORDER BY `status` DESC, score DESC

Answer 1

This is a combination of two problems:
# isn't considered being a 'word character', and neither is -, so searching for a#b.com actually comes down to searching for words a, b and com
a and b are shorter than ft_min_word_len
The solution would be to make # and . being considered word characters. There are several methods listed on http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.6/en/fulltext-fine-tuning.html
The most practical one would be adding a custom collation as described in
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.6/en/full-text-adding-collation.html

Answer 2

Update:
a)You need to set ft_min_word_len = 1 in my.cnf.
b) Output of show variables
ft_min_word_len | 1
c) Fired below query:
mysql> SELECT name,email FROM jos_users WHERE MATCH (email) AGAINST ('a#b.com') limit 1;
+--------+---------+
| name | email |
+--------+---------+
| kap | a#b.com |
+--------+---------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)
Hope this will help.
~K
I think you need to change ft_min_word_len
As specified in MySQLdoc fine tuning
The minimum and maximum lengths of words to be indexed are defined by
the ft_min_word_len and ft_max_word_len system variables. (See
Section 5.1.4, “Server System Variables”.) The default minimum value
is four characters; the default maximum is version dependent. If you
change either value, you must rebuild your FULLTEXT indexes. For
example, if you want three-character words to be searchable, you can
set the ft_min_word_len variable by putting the following lines in an
option file:
[mysqld]
ft_min_word_len=3
Then restart the server and rebuild your FULLTEXT indexes. Note particularly the remarks regarding myisamchk in the instructions
following this list.