Brad,

> why aren't you using the Swish::API perl module for this? It would make
> the issue much easier to debug IMHO.

Because we use 2.4.3 and were scared away from 2.4.4 by all the
messages last week. Swish-e API says:
   DEPENDENCIES
   You must have installed Swish-e version 2.4 before building this module.
I also noticed API's for 2.4.3 but it looks like a full rewrite,
instead of just adding a few search fields.

> swish-e -w author=$author costcenter=$costcenter -f blah.index

I'll try it without the \" around the meta fields, but in the
documentation I read that it then literary searches for the words
author=cas instead of searching for "cas" in the author field only.
And these quotes do work with author.

> it really should work, our index has about 30 custom metanames and we
> have no issue with searching them.

I will have only 6 or so.

> have you also done swish-e -T INDEX_METANAMES to confirm that both are
> available?

I just did and notice my custom fields "costc, sector, and ext" are
present twice, is that OK? For the record, I want to display "rank,
title, description, author, url" and want to search on "swishdefault,
author, title, costcenter, sector, extension, lastmodified". The
output was:

-----> METANAMES for /web/bin/swish-e-2.4.3/qasindexfiles/docs.index
-----> <-----

        swishdefault : id= 1 type= 1  META_INDEX  Rank Bias=  0

       swishreccount : id= 2 type=42  META_INTERNAL META_PROP:NUMBER

           swishrank : id= 3 type=42  META_INTERNAL META_PROP:NUMBER

        swishfilenum : id= 4 type=42  META_INTERNAL META_PROP:NUMBER

         swishdbfile : id= 5 type=38  META_INTERNAL
META_PROP:STRING(case:compare) SortKeyLen: 100

        swishdocpath : id= 6 type= 6  META_PROP:STRING(case:compare)
SortKeyLen: 100  *presorted*

          swishtitle : id= 7 type=70  META_PROP:STRING(case:ignore)
SortKeyLen: 100  *presorted*

        swishdocsize : id= 8 type=10  META_PROP:NUMBER *presorted*

   swishlastmodified : id= 9 type=18  META_PROP:DATE *presorted*

               costc : id=10 type= 1  META_INDEX  Rank Bias=  0

              sector : id=11 type= 1  META_INDEX  Rank Bias=  0

                 ext : id=12 type= 1  META_INDEX  Rank Bias=  0

            headings : id=13 type= 1  META_INDEX  Rank Bias=  6

         description : id=14 type= 1  META_INDEX  Rank Bias=  8

              author : id=15 type= 1  META_INDEX  Rank Bias=  5

                  h1 : id=16 type= 1  META_INDEX  Rank Bias=  0 [Alias
for headings (13)]

                  h2 : id=17 type= 1  META_INDEX  Rank Bias=  0 [Alias
for headings (13)]

                  h3 : id=18 type= 1  META_INDEX  Rank Bias=  0 [Alias
for headings (13)]

         description : id=19 type=70  META_PROP:STRING(case:ignore)
SortKeyLen: 100  *presorted*

              author : id=20 type=70  META_PROP:STRING(case:ignore)
SortKeyLen: 100  *presorted*

               costc : id=21 type=70  META_PROP:STRING(case:ignore)
SortKeyLen: 100  *presorted*

              sector : id=22 type=70  META_PROP:STRING(case:ignore)
SortKeyLen: 100  *presorted*

                 ext : id=23 type=70  META_PROP:STRING(case:ignore)
SortKeyLen: 100  *presorted*

            headings : id=24 type= 6  META_PROP:STRING(case:compare)
SortKeyLen: 100  *presorted*

               title : id=25 type= 1  META_INDEX  Rank Bias= 10


Regards,
Cas