MSE forum search facility

Eco_Miser

The option to use Regular Expressions in a search would solve most, if not all, of the 'too wide' and 'too narrow' search problems. The Regular Expressions define patterns to match exactly (although the pattern can define a rather vague match such as P.*O (a P followed by any characters and finally an O). So \bPARAMO\b would find PARAMO preceded and followed by non-word characters (white space, punctuation etc.)
I'm sure there are standard libraries for RE searches in all modern languages. Training the users in their proper use may be more problematical.