its a lot more than JUST SPACES - the code shows if you put 2 terms in the search it will do an "OR" of the terms, which is (definately) LESS of what I would be searching for ( but I also understand that doing an implied "AND" of those 2 terms may be dependent on the order they appear... if I search for this post using "algorithm search" -- your OR should turn it up (in both $where clauses) - but you are still going to get a lot of other posts (like anything which mentions "algorithm" or "search" ...
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but " $term%" like "the" will match all those "them", "there", "theme", "thesis", "theater", etc ...
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--beskuttle/skutlbot