# Boolean searching disabled?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/boolean-searching-disabled/469001>\
**Category:** About This Message Board\
**Created:** [October 22, 2008, 1:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/boolean-searching-disabled/469001 "2008-10-22T01:55:58Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Morbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/morbo/32/389_2.png) [@Morbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morbo)\
**Post date:** [October 22, 2008, 1:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/boolean-searching-disabled/469001/1 "2008-10-22T01:55:58Z")

</div>

Ex: I tried searching “NOT Palin” and got every Palin thread. (I also tried searching the FAQ for “Boolean” which returned no matches).

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![SkipMagic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skipmagic/32/20706_2.png) [@SkipMagic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SkipMagic)\
**Post date:** [October 22, 2008, 2:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/boolean-searching-disabled/469001/2 "2008-10-22T02:17:33Z")

</div>

It seemed to work for me. I did a search of the last three months for thread titles containing _Sarah NOT Palin_, and the only “Palin” I saw in the results were forms of Palin, such as “Palin’s” or " Palin-without".

The search keywords in the results page also showed _sarah, -palin_, so it appears to be functioning okay.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Muffin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/muffin/32/4341_2.png) [@Muffin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Muffin)\
**Post date:** [October 22, 2008, 6:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/boolean-searching-disabled/469001/3 "2008-10-22T06:39:51Z")

</div>

For the last few days, I have not been able to search at all. This is what is returned:

**Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 134217728 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 9 bytes) in /home/straightdope/boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/search.php on line 1007**

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Morbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/morbo/32/389_2.png) [@Morbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morbo)\
**Post date:** [October 22, 2008, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/boolean-searching-disabled/469001/4 "2008-10-22T19:00:07Z")

</div>

OK then. Logic error on my part.