Could you please try to explain this more clearly?

Super Search will tell you "User "0" does not exist" if you search for nodes authored by "0", that is, if you enter "0", without the quotes, into the field found after "(*) Match -or- (*) Exclude authors".

If you wanted to try to validate this assertion, then super search isn't the best tool for it. The closest you could come with it would be to enter "0" (without the quotes) into the "Match titles containing" field, check the "User" box, and select the "Don't include replies" button. (Well, you could come even closer if you also entered something like "s t r l e n _", without the quotes, into the field after "Skip titles containing" to greatly shorten the number of matches returned.)

This will list the first N users (likely 50, depends on load) who have a zero in their name. Then you could look down the list for users with the name "0", click "Next >", repeat... until you have seen that Super Search was correct when it said that.

But you can't create a user called "0" and (mostly because "0" is false in Perl) you can't even do a simple search (the box at the top of each page) for just "0" (which would be a better way to check whether a specific short username existed). You can't even (any more) create users with just digits in their names.

I tried to figure out what you had done to "get 50 NodeReaper entries" but failed to. But whatever it was, I strongly suspect is has very little to do with whether there is a user called "0".

So I think you are confused about what Super Search is doing in some cases. I'm not very surprised at that and now that the Site Documentation Clan is kicking some serious boots, maybe we'll get some documentation for Super Search that will help.

So I'd be interested to understand what you tried and what you thought it was going to do, as it might suggest changes to the layout/wording on Super Search that would make things clearer.

This post assumes that there is no PerlMonk by the name of spearmint

I have a friend, who I have not heard from for a long time. He goes by the handle spearmint on the internet. He is a keen Perl coder. I therefore thought to try and look him up on PerlMonks.

The only place I could see to search on Monk names was the very optional field box that you mention in SuperSearch:

(*) Match -or- (*) Exclude authors <INPUT BOX>

When I type in spearmint in that field and then press the Submit button, the first line returned (excluding the usual headers) is:

User "0" does not exist.

Which, strictly speaking is not what I asked for. I was expecting:

User "spearmint" does not exist.

So I replaced spearmint with 0 (just to be pedantic) and pressed the Submit button again. This returns:

Found 50 nodes roughly between 1999-10-04 and 2000-10-09 (searched 15.13% of DB).
written by any of NodeReaper

And so, just being as I am, I sought various other options, one of which is to replace the now 0 with "0", which returns:

User "0" does not exist.

And that cannot be argued with.

Hope this is clear enough.

<a href="http://www.graq.co.uk">Graq</a>

Hmm, I (mistakenly) thought I had tried those things and not gotten those reponses. I see your point now. You found two bugs, one rather minor and one major.

They've both been fixed now.

Thanks much.

                - tye

While not obvious, it is possible to find all monks with 'mint' in their usernames.

Every monk has a homenode. Homenodes are of type 'user' and have a title of $monkname. Therefore, if you super search on "Match titles containing: mint" and "Search only section: Users", you should get what you want:

Pmint
adominte
stmintz
MintyFresh
Figmint
supermint
mint1981


-Blake

Looking good so far, though the google links are a bit repetative ;p

<a href="http://www.graq.co.uk">Graq</a>