---
title: "Search for a string containing special characters"
canonical_url: "https://www.nutrient.io/guides/ios/knowledge-base/search-special-characters/"
md_url: "https://www.nutrient.io/guides/ios/knowledge-base/search-special-characters.md"
last_updated: "2026-05-14T16:53:43.872Z"
description: "Learn to search for strings with special characters using the `documentUIDsMatchingString` API. Bypass SQLite limitations by enabling exact phrase matching in your queries."
---

When using the `documentUIDsMatchingString` API, it’s possible to search for a string that contains special characters. The [`documentUIDsMatchingString`](https://www.nutrient.io/api/ios/documentation/pspdfkit/pdflibrary/documentuids(matching:options:completionhandler:previewtexthandler:)) API uses SQLite under the hood, and by default, SQLite doesn’t consider the hyphen to be a searchable character. See the [SQLite FTS5 webpage](https://www.sqlite.org/fts5.html) for more information.

The easiest way to work around this SQLite limitation is to pass [`.matchExactPhrasesOnly`](https://www.nutrient.io/api/ios/documentation/pspdfkit/pdflibrary/option/matchexactphrasesonly) in the options dictionary, like so:

### SWIFT

```swift

let options = [PDFLibrary.Option.matchExactPhrasesOnly: true]
PSPDFKit.SDK.shared.library?.documentUIDs(matching: searchTerm, options: options, completionHandler: { searchString, resultSet in
    print(resultSet)
}, previewTextHandler: { searchString, resultSet in
    print(resultSet)
})

```

### OBJECTIVE-C

```objc

NSDictionary *options = @{ PSPDFLibraryOptionMatchExactPhrasesOnly: @YES };
[PSPDFKitGlobal.sharedInstance.library documentUIDsMatchingString:searchTerm options:options completionHandler:^(NSString *searchString, NSDictionary *resultSet) {
    NSLog(@"%@", resultSet);
} previewTextHandler:^(NSString * _Nonnull searchString, NSDictionary<NSString *,NSSet<PSPDFLibraryPreviewResult *> *> * _Nonnull resultSet) {
    NSLog(@"%@", resultSet);
}];

```

For more details, refer to the following guides:

- [Indexed full-text search (FTS)](https://www.nutrient.io/guides/ios/features/indexed-full-text-search.md)

- [Using custom tokenizers](https://www.nutrient.io/guides/ios/memory-and-storage/using-custom-tokenizers.md)

If your use case only requires you to search within a specific document instead of your entire library, consider using our [text search feature](https://www.nutrient.io/guides/ios/features/text-search.md).
---

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