What is the difference between {searchString} and {searchString*} FIND clauses in SOSL

Question

I run 2 SOSL queries -

Query1:

FIND {Athreya}  
IN ALL FIELDS 
RETURNING Account(Id,Account_Number__c, RecordType.Name,Name LIMIT 16)

Result: 7 records whose field value contains 'Athreya'

Query2:

FIND {Athreya*}  
IN ALL FIELDS 
RETURNING Account(Id,Account_Number__c, RecordType.Name,Name LIMIT 16) 

Result: 7 records whose field value contains 'Athreya'

According to my understanding, Query1 should return records whose any field value = 'Athreya' and Query2 should return records whose any field value contains 'Athreya' (for ex. Athreyas,Athreyag,..). Is my understanding correct?

Answer 1

Your understanding is correct. QUery2 should return records whose any field contain a word that starts with Athreya and has zero, one or more trailing characters. If you want to check for only one trailing character, use ?. Query1 on the other hand only returns the records that contain the exact word Athreya

From - https://developer.salesforce.com/docs/atlas.en-us.soql_sosl.meta/soql_sosl/sforce_api_calls_sosl_find.htm

Wildcards

You can specify the following wildcard characters to match text patterns in your search:

* - Asterisks match zero or more characters at the middle or end of your search term. For example, a search for john* finds items that start with john, such as, john, johnson, or johnny. A search for mi* meyers finds items with mike meyers or michael meyers.

? - Question marks match only one character in the middle or end of your search term. For example, a search for jo?n finds items with the term john or joan but not jon or johan. You can't use a ? in a lookup search.