Missing feature in Phrase Search?

Oleg, Teodor, folks:

I was demo'ing phrase search for a meetup yesterday, and the user
feedback I got showed that there's a missing feature with phrase search.
Let me explain by example:

'fix <-> error' will match 'fixed error', 'fixing error'
but not 'fixed language error' or 'fixed a small error'

'fix <2> error' will match 'fixed language error',
but not 'fixing error' or 'fixed a small error'

'fix <3> error' will match 'fixed a small error',
but not any of the other strings.

This is because the # in <#> is an exact match.

Seems like we could really use a way for users to indicate that they
want a range of word gaps. Like, in the example above, users could
search on:

'fix <1:3> error'

... which would search for any phrase where "error" followed "fix" by
between 1 and 3 words.

Not wedded to any particular syntax for that, of course.

--
Josh Berkus
Containers & Databases Oh My!