The Ultimate Guide to High Availability with MariaDB
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Is it safe to change ft_min_word_len without rebuilding indexes?

Is changing ft_min_word_len without rebuilding old myisam indexes safe?

Assume current setting is ft_min_word_len=4 (and tons of indexes created with this setting) and now changing to ft_min_word_len=2.

By safe I mean mariadb server won't complain and will just use old indexes - but these will work like ft_min_word_len=4 - while new (or rebuild) indexes will work like ft_min_word_len=2 ?

The goal is to change this value for new indexes without having to find out and rebuild old ones.

ps. documentation isn't detailed about this and only says "FULLTEXT indexes on MyISAM tables must be rebuilt after changing this variable"

Answer Answered by Ian Gilfillan in this comment.

I'm not aware that it's been deeply tested, but I don't think there should be any safety issues. The old indexes will continue to use the old value, while new indexes (and new values added to old indexes) will make use of the new value.

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