# Complete word search?

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/complete-word-search/118282>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [October 25, 2007, 11:53am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/complete-word-search/118282 "2007-10-25T11:53:16Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![vapor](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/v/5e9695/32.png) [@vapor](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/vapor)\
**Post date:** [October 25, 2007, 11:53am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/complete-word-search/118282/1 "2007-10-25T11:53:16Z")

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I am using LIKE operator for search but it brings so many results, for  
example if I just enter ‘a’ it brings up almost everything since its the  
most common letter.

is there any way to match the whole word with LIKE?

thanks

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**Author:** ![vapor](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/v/5e9695/32.png) [@vapor](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/vapor)\
**Post date:** [October 25, 2007, 12:09pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/complete-word-search/118282/2 "2007-10-25T12:09:07Z")

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Vapor … wrote:

> I am using LIKE operator for search but it brings so many results, for  
> example if I just enter ‘a’ it brings up almost everything since its the  
> most common letter.
> 
> is there any way to match the whole word with LIKE?
> 
> thanks

instead ogf LIKE you can use "="then you can match the whole word

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![vapor](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/v/5e9695/32.png) [@vapor](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/vapor)\
**Post date:** [October 25, 2007, 2:47pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/complete-word-search/118282/3 "2007-10-25T14:47:54Z")

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On Oct 25, 3:09 am, Abhi M. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid)  
wrote:

> –  
> Posted viahttp://www.ruby-forum.com/.

BTW there’s a number of search plugins for rails, including some built  
on MySQWL, postgres etc. full text search, e.g. acts\_as\_fulltextable,  
acts\_as\_tsearch,

[http://agilewebdevelopment.com/plugins/search?search=search](http://agilewebdevelopment.com/plugins/search?search=search)