Why does JQL LIKE (~) operator not find my issue?

Question

Today I was trying to query some customer issues in JIRA using a text custom field “SF_case” field and noticed an inconsistency.

Running the following query returned nothing but saying “No matching issues found.” (NO error was reported):

% SF_case ~ 00002075

I got the expected result only when the number was enclosed by either single or double quotes:

% SF_case ~ '00002075'

% SF_case ~ "00002075"

Note that in case of another custom field, all three queries below work as expected:

% GlobalID ~ 64412

% GlobalID ~ '64412'

% GlobalID ~ "64412"

If the same “~” operator is used for both fields, then why their behavior is different?

Scott Evans · Answer

Yes they are using the same searcher and are the same text field type.

John Bishop · Answer

Is GlobalID the same text custom field type? Are the using the same type of searcher?

Perhaps it is because of the leading zeros in the SF_case value. Without the quotes, Jira might be interpreting the value as 2075 instead of 00002075.