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Should the system allow the use of {braces} (in addition to [brackets]) to search for tags?

I know that one can limit the scope of a search to a subset of specific tags by enclosing them in [brackets], which is all fine, but as everywhere in the site the tags are displayed in {braces}, my brain just automatically wants to type a { instead of a [ when typing into the search box.

I think it should be fairly simple to allow both uses, as currently the braces in a search term seem to be completely ignored.

What do people think about this?

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I would be delighted if braces were supported as possible replacement for square brackets, since it matches the tag design, as Juan said.

Since the question is site specific, regarding TeX.SX's tag design, it's good to bring it up here.

On this occasion I noticed that the normal search obviously doesn't look in less-frequent tags if not explicitely specified by brackets, tested with {site-promotion} which returns 0 hits, though there are 8 questions tagged . I would wish that both in-text and tag hits are shown. Filtering with [tag] or +text is still an option.

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  • It's quite the other way around: if you search for tables, then you will only find questions tagged {tables} since the search function will automatically add the []! (I mean this for the main site where {tables} is a frequent tag, not for meta.)
    – Hendrik Vogt
    Jul 14, 2011 at 11:29
  • @Hendrik: Then there's a different behaviour on the main site. Also not perfect, I think.
    – Stefan Kottwitz Mod
    Jul 14, 2011 at 11:59
  • This is a feature for the most frequent tags, and we also have it here on meta! Just try discussion.
    – Hendrik Vogt
    Jul 14, 2011 at 12:06
  • So, for frequent tags the feature hides in-text hits, and for less frequent tags it hides the tag hits... I would expect that both in-text and tag hits are shown. Filtering with [tag] is still possible.
    – Stefan Kottwitz Mod
    Jul 14, 2011 at 12:14
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    Because the {..} format is site specific for us (other pages have completely different formats for tag names) it is VERY unlikely that Stackexchange will adjust their search engine for us.
    – Martin Scharrer
    Jul 14, 2011 at 15:01

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