fulltext not for me/alternatives

I have a bit of a problem with using freetext indexes because there are a LOT of important 3 letter words in my database and as I am using shared hosting so do not have the option to recompile MySql. Can't quite figure why 3 is not the default (car, dog, cat war, man, bed, ....). Maybe so you would have to recompile to be able to find s_e_x ;). The other thing I cant figure out is how much data you need for it to actually work well. There is a reference in the manual saying it works better on bigger data sets but no indication as to what it means by big. Anyway, this means I am looking for an alternative which can be implemented on php4. Has anyone any suggestions? Ben 3.23.41-log Also in the manual it mentions freetext search **************************************************************

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