PHP MYSQL FULLTEXT Misbehaving

[blitzen]

I set up a mysql table with some fields as a FULLTEXT index.
The mysql crunching is done via PHP.

It works - for the most part.

Here is the issue. I am using an AJAX autocomplete that throws up the results as each character is typed into a text box (This is a search feature). The php program does get called with each character after the first 3 are typed (the php file writes to a log file for each character typed.)

I get results returned for
AGAINST ('+bird' IN BOOLEAN MODE)
AGAINST ('+bird ' IN BOOLEAN MODE)
AGAINST ('+bird +f' IN BOOLEAN MODE)
AGAINST ('+bird +fe' IN BOOLEAN MODE)
AGAINST ('+bird +fee' IN BOOLEAN MODE)

No results for this (The php mysql_num_rows for the "no results" is zero.)
AGAINST ('+bird +feed' IN BOOLEAN MODE)

No results for
AGAINST ('+bird +feede' IN BOOLEAN MODE)

Then results are returned for
AGAINST ('+bird +feeder' IN BOOLEAN MODE)

This is puzzling me to my wits end.
I run the query in phpMyAdmin and get plenty of rows returned for '+bird +feed' and '+bird +feede'.
(Yes, it's the same query php runs - I have that in the log and copy-n-paste into phpMyAdmin).

I can type the characters into the textbox ever so slowly and same result.

Can you see what is preventing no results for the interim searches?
And, how to fix it?

---------- Post added at 11:15 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:03 PM ----------

I added * at the end of each search term and am now getting results for the no results.
Can anyone explain why I didn't above?
And why results were returned for the first grouping? There is no full word, "fe" or "fee" in the database fields.
And, why the php program returned zero rows when phpMyAdmin would with the exact same query on the same db.

[TrafficProducer]

Check collation, characters used

collation different from character_set_server or collation_server. Case sensitivity of stopword lookups depends on the server collation. For example, lookups are case insensitive if the collation is latin1_swedish_ci, whereas lookups are case sensitive if the collation is latin1_general_cs or latin1_bin.

FULL TEXT will not do any less than I think it is 4 characters.

Boolean Full-Text Searches

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/...t-boolean.html

Full-Text Search Functions

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/...xt-search.html

And there are

Full-Text Stopwords

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/...stopwords.html


If a word is specified with the truncation operator, it is not stripped from a boolean query, even if it is too short (as determined from the ft_min_word_len setting) or a stopword. This occurs because the word is not seen as too short or a stopword, but as a prefix that must be present in the document in the form of a word that begins with the prefix. Suppose that ft_min_word_len=4. Then a search for '+word +the*' will likely return fewer rows than a search for '+word +the'