[SalesForce] SOSL query with special characters

I am building a dynamic SOSL Query 

searchText = 'AB-C';

searchquery = 'FIND {'+ searchText + '} IN all FIELDS RETURNING Account(   id, name, ownerid,website, CMFL__Oppty_Count__c WHERE '+ condition +'  order by  createddate DESC  )';
                    System.debug(searchquery);

Debug

FIND {AB-C*} IN all FIELDS RETURNING Account( id,
name,Additional_domains__c, ownerid,website WHERE
(Website_Domain__c='ab\-c.com' OR Additional_domains__c like
'%ab\-c.com%') order by createddate DESC )

When the query is run it returns an error

System.QueryException: line 1:8 mismatched character '-' expecting '}'

I thought i havent escaped the string for special chars and hence this error. I removed the '-' in AB-C and now i get this error on the where condition where i have escaped in the where conditions

Invalid string literal 'ab\-c.com'. Illegal character sequence '\-' in
string literal.

When should i escape the string and when i should not while creating a dynamic query

Best Answer

The SOSL Reference describes the reserved characters in the search query (FIND clause):

The following characters are reserved: ? & | ! { } [ ] ( ) ^ ~ * : \ " ' + -

Reserved characters, if specified in a text search, must be escaped (preceded by the backslash \ character) to be properly interpreted. An error occurs if you do not precede reserved characters with a backslash. This is true even if the SearchQuery is enclosed in double quotes.

So you do need to escape the hyphen in your FIND clause with a backslash, which itself must be escaped (yielding \\-) in an Apex string literal.

In the SOSL WHERE clause, however, the hyphen is not a special character and does not need to be escaped.

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