How do I search for a “-” in a field value in kibana?

Question

Here is the mapping for this field:

"username": {
  "type": "text",
  "norms": false,
  "fields": {
    "keyword": {
      "type": "keyword"
    }
  }
},

I have a field that occasionally has the value of "-":

I clicked "filter for value" and this is the filter it created:

But when I do searches for this value it says not results found.

How do I escape the "-"?

I tried "\\-" but no dice

I tried check if the value "exists" as suggested but this also returns 0 results:

Also tried !(_exists_:"username") in the kibana search bar and that also returns 0 results.

Also running (_exists_:"username") included docs with and without a value for the username field

I also tried this which returns 0 results:

(_missing_:"username")

Answer 1

As your username field is of text type and analyzed with standard analyzer , the inverted index will have no tokens for username where as username.keyword is of keyword type it will have the exact value - in inverted index.

You can search it in following ways:

1. From Kibana search bar:

   username.keyword: "-"

2. From Kibana filter:

   { "term": { "username.keyword": "-" } }

3. From Sense plugin:

   GET _search { "query": { "term": { "username.keyword": "-" } } }