The Solr query syntax wiki says that “Pure negative queries (all clauses prohibited) are allowed”, but this is only true at the top level – a pure negative query within parentheses gets evaluated in the same Boolean Query rather nested as a new BooleanQuery with a MUST for *:*.
See: http://wiki.apache.org/solr/SolrQuerySyntax The question is... should this to be treated as a “bug” (and presumably, eventually, fixed), or a “won’t fix” limitation that merely needs to be documented since people keep stumbling into it? I can file a Jira if we really want to do something about this, or I can just add a note to the wiki. Or maybe both, with a wiki note needed now. -- Jack Krupansky
