A search of a code string within my posts doesn't work

Question

I'm searching my posts which contain \multicolumn{1}.

I tried with:

code:"\multicolumn{1}" user:me

and

code:\multicolumn{1} user:me

but they both give 0 results, whereas there is at least one post of mine which match that conditions: \makecell in the header: how to get rid of the space after the last column of the table?.

What am I doing wrong or how can I properly search for these posts?

Answer 1

You'll have to route your query through SEDE. I think the reason here is the difference between the stored content of the post (what you actually typed) and the baked content (what is visualized through the browser). This difference is needed because of Stack Exchange accepting Markdown as input.

This query hopefully provides what you're looking for:

SELECT
 Id As [Post Link],
 *
FROM
 Posts
WHERE
 (OwnerUserId = 101651) And
 (Body LIKE '%multicolumn{1}%');

We search for all fields within the records of the Posts table, but only records where you posted something and there is multicolumn{1} somewhere in the body. The first field returned will be a hyperlink to the post. This would be synonymous to a regular search resembling

user:101651 "multicolumn{1}"

since multicolumn{1} could appear in a baked or unbaked form.

The only drawback is that SEDE is updated with roughly a one week lag.