halfEscapeMatch() regex purpose?

[alpha0010]

What are the regexes here supposed to do? For me, the single rule '/(\S+)(?:\s+-\s+|-)(\S+)/' => '\1\-\2' seems more useful (preventing accidental negation in natural language).

[oohnoitz]

Yes, I believe it was to deal with accidental negations in certain search queries provided by some users. Could you send a PR with that change?