<p>In pure MySQL land, this will depend on the underlying character set and collation of the underlying database and tables that Craft is searching against.  You can read more on the MySQL 5.1 rules regarding that <a href="https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/charset-mysql.html" rel="nofollow">here</a> and see an example of how to utilize it <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3304464/mysql-diacritic-insensitive-search-spanish-accents">here</a>.</p>

<p>In Craft, however, we will do some normalization and additionally <a href="https://github.com/pixelandtonic/Craft-Release/blob/master/app/helpers/StringHelper.php#L355" rel="nofollow">swap any known diacritics</a> with their ASCII counterparts (ü => u) among other things before saving to the <code>craft_searchindex</code> table in the database.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-02-23T01:02:41.753Z
2015-02-23T01:02:41.753Z
Brad Bell
<p>Is Craft's <a href="http://buildwithcraft.com/docs/searching" rel="nofollow"><code>.search()</code></a> diacritic-insensitive?</p>

<p>(If not, is there a way to make it so?)</p>

<search>
Is Craft's search diacritic-sensitive?
# Is Craft's search diacritic-sensitive?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2015-02-23)

Is Craft's [`.search()`](http://buildwithcraft.com/docs/searching) diacritic-insensitive?

(If not, is there a way to make it so?)

**Tags:** search


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## 1 answers

### Answer by username_1 on 2015-02-23. Score: 3 | Accepted answer

In pure MySQL land, this will depend on the underlying character set and collation of the underlying database and tables that Craft is searching against. You can read more on the MySQL 5.1 rules regarding that [here](https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/charset-mysql.html) and see an example of how to utilize it [here](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3304464/mysql-diacritic-insensitive-search-spanish-accents).

In Craft, however, we will do some normalization and additionally [swap any known diacritics](https://github.com/pixelandtonic/Craft-Release/blob/master/app/helpers/StringHelper.php#L355) with their ASCII counterparts (ü => u) among other things before saving to the `craft_searchindex` table in the database.


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