Terms Query Parser: filtering on null and strings with whitespace.

[Andreas Lønes]

I am experiencing some weird behaviour when using terms query parser where I am 
filtering on documents that has no value for a given field(null) and strings 
with whitespaces.

I can filter on documents not having a value OR having some specific values for 
the field as long as the value does not have a whitespace(example 1). I can 
also filter on specific values with whitespace)(example 2).
What I am not able to make work is to filter on documents not having a value OR 
certain terms with whitespace(example 3)

These work:
    1. (*:* AND -department_shortname:[* TO *]) OR {!tag=department_shortname 
terms f=department_shortname}BARN,KIR
    2. {!tag=department_name terms f=department_name}Kirurgisk avdeling
Does not work:
    3. (*:* AND -department_name:[* TO *]) OR {!tag=department_name terms 
f=department_name}Kirurgisk avdeling

The configuration of the fields if that is of any value:
    <field name="department_name" type="string" indexed="true" stored="true" 
required="false" multiValued="false" />
    <field name="department_shortname" type="string" indexed="true" 
stored="true" required="false" multiValued="false" />

So far, the only solution I can come up with is to index some kind of value 
that represents null, but as of my understanding it is recommended that null is 
not indexed.


Thanks,
Andreas