Forcing Google to use special characters O/T

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Klank

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Off topic but it is the sort of thing you may know about!

How do I force a search engine to take special characters in my
search string?

Let me explain what I mean. I usually use Google and I tried to
find out about an MS Word file which I came across on my hard
drive.

The name of the file is: ~$access.doc
I searched Google for: ~$access.doc
I found Google actually searched for: ~?cess.doc
And the hits Google gave ignored both the ~ and the ?.

Using double quotes like this "~$access.doc" did not help.

Altavista also seems to give a similar result.

How do I force Google (or maybe abother good web search engine) to
take special characters like the ones I tried to use?
 
Klank said:
Off topic but it is the sort of thing you may know about!

How do I force a search engine to take special characters in my
search string?

Let me explain what I mean. I usually use Google and I tried to
find out about an MS Word file which I came across on my hard
drive.

The name of the file is: ~$access.doc
I searched Google for: ~$access.doc
I found Google actually searched for: ~?cess.doc
And the hits Google gave ignored both the ~ and the ?.

Using double quotes like this "~$access.doc" did not help.

Altavista also seems to give a similar result.

How do I force Google (or maybe abother good web search engine) to
take special characters like the ones I tried to use?
Click to expand...

Google Help:
http://www.google.com/help/refinesearch.html


--
Ronnie Vernon
Microsoft MVP-Windows Shell/User

Please reply to the newsgroup so all may benefit.
http://www.dts-l.org
http://www.mvps.org
 
Klank said:
Unfortunately that page does not address my problem.
Click to expand...

It shows you what can be used with Google. I'm afraid that you cannot
"force" characters that are not supported by their search engine.
--
Ronnie Vernon
Microsoft MVP
Windows Shell/User

Please reply to the newsgroup so all may benefit.
http://www.dts-l.org
http://www.mvps.org
 
Unfortunately, you can't force Google to not ignore special characters, even in quotes or with the advanced search; it just treats them as whitespace. Even Google codesearch just searches source code.

Try a search engine such as http://www.symbolhound.com

[disclosure: I am part of the team for SymbolHound.]
This site allows you to perform symbol-inclusive web searches. It should solve your problem!
 
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