The search facility was adequate for the job when it was written, what, 8 years ago and there were a few thousand messages in the forum. I've long thought it would be good to improve the search logic though I haven't had time to do that. I've also considered just using Google but I had to wait for Google to properly index the entire forum, and there's obviously some drawbacks to depending on Google since it will never have the absolute newest messages.

In the case of your example, searching for "K&R" is actually going to search for messages with the letter "K" and "R" in it. The ampersand is treated as a delimiter as if it were a space, and is ignored. It's not treated as an actual part of the search.

As with Google or any other search facility, the most important thing is picking the right keyword to search on. Having said that, my search logic is not as powerful as Google's, either, which explains why I'm not worth $200 billion.

Regards,
Craig Steiner
8052.com Webmaster