# Struggling with searching for greater/lesser than characters in string

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/struggling-with-searching-for-greater-lesser-than-characters-in-string/92930>\
**Category:** Kibana\
**Created:** [July 13, 2017, 5:27am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/struggling-with-searching-for-greater-lesser-than-characters-in-string/92930 "2017-07-13T05:27:58Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![helium](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/2acd7d/32.png) [@helium](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/helium)\
**Post date:** [July 13, 2017, 5:27am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/struggling-with-searching-for-greater-lesser-than-characters-in-string/92930/1 "2017-07-13T05:27:58Z")

</div>

Hi,

I need to find events containing the \< (lesser than) character but I can't escape it properly, backslash seems to be doing nothing.

Any idea?

Thanks,

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Bargs](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/bargs/32/5429_2.png) [@Bargs](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Bargs)\
**Post date:** [July 13, 2017, 2:47pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/struggling-with-searching-for-greater-lesser-than-characters-in-string/92930/2 "2017-07-13T14:47:26Z")

</div>

Backslash [should work](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/query-dsl-query-string-query.html#_reserved_characters). You could also try wrapping your value in double quotes.

What's the issue though? Are you getting an error or are you simply not seeing the results you expect? If the latter, are you sure the [analyzer](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/analysis.html) for the field you're querying on hasn't stripped characters like `<`?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\
**Post date:** [August 10, 2017, 2:47pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/struggling-with-searching-for-greater-lesser-than-characters-in-string/92930/3 "2017-08-10T14:47:41Z")

</div>

This topic was automatically closed 28 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.