stray dashes break repo search

[milahu]

🏷️ Discussion Type

Bug

Body

when i search for repos with the query
Some Author - Some Title
then the search returns no results
also when there are repos with the description
Some Author - Some Title

workaround:
remove the dash and search for
Some Author Some Title

expected:
the dash operator should exclude search terms
but only when the search terms are directly prefixed with a dash
for example
GoodTerm1 GoodTerm2 -BadTerm1 -BadTerm2
or
GoodTerm1 GoodTerm2 -(BadTerm1 BadTerm2)

reproduce:

• repo with dash: milahu/test-github-repo-search-dash - Some123 Author234 - Some345 Title456
  • search: Some123 Author234 - Some345 Title456 → no result
  • search: Some123 Author234 Some345 Title456 → yes result
• repo with ndash: milahu/test-github-repo-search-ndash - Some234 Author345 – Some456 Title567
  • search: Some234 Author345 – Some456 Title567 → no result
  • search: Some234 Author345 Some456 Title567 → yes result
• repo with mdash: milahu/test-github-repo-search-mdash - Some345 Author456 — Some567 Title678
  • search: Some345 Author456 — Some567 Title678 → no result
  • search: Some345 Author456 Some567 Title678 → yes result

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[tanvishinde017]

Thanks for reporting this.

I can reproduce the logic issue you're describing. In many search syntaxes, a leading - is treated as a negation operator, but a hyphen surrounded by spaces (for example, Author - Title) is commonly used as punctuation and should not change the meaning of the query.

Your workaround of removing the dash makes sense, but ideally GitHub Search would distinguish between:

• GoodTerm1 GoodTerm2 -BadTerm
  → exclude BadTerm

and

• Some Author - Some Title
  → treat - as a literal separator/punctuation

Another possible solution would be supporting grouped exclusions such as:

GoodTerm1 GoodTerm2 -(BadTerm1 BadTerm2)

or requiring the minus operator to be directly attached to the excluded term, similar to many search engines.

Hopefully the search team can clarify whether this is expected behavior or an unintended parsing issue.

[milahu]

whether this is expected behavior

obviously this is not expected...

when users copy-paste a search query like
SomeApp - The fastest someapp in the world
then users will not find repos with that description

surprisingly, also ndash and mdash break the repo search
(i have added example repos)