I have discovered by chance that placing a circumflex accent (^) before a word in the search field limits the search to items that commence with that word.
Q1. Where is this feature documented, and what similar features are available, if any?
Q2. Can I stop this feature, given that I use this symbol in my database for another purpose, which this conflicts with?
Actually all punctuation is removed from the search index at the time of saving. So having punctuation in your search term should have no effect on the search. Tap Forms always does a prefixed search for words that begin with the search term specified.
I get different results if I use these three terms in the search box top right
“Name” and “^ Name” are the same, so yes, I can see the ^ is ignored.
But if I put “^Name”, I get no results at all, so in this case the ^ is not ignored, the whole term is.
Unfortunately, this is exactly what I use to prefix certain words, to distinguish them from other (irrelevant) use of the word. I suppose I could use “xxName”, but it somewhat compromises readability.