No kidding. (: It's been discussed rather recently in this section (and several times in the chatter box). Super Search is being replaced. The replacement won't have this restriction.

Hmm, if you have "show moderated content" turned off (the default), then I think this previous discussion, PerlMonks Search Regex, would have been directly above the input box (if you used the one at the bottom of Perl Monks Discussion) while you were entering your question. :)

And I guess you haven't noticed that the regular search now ignores 3-letter words as well (see (tye)Re: Searching and Typing). That too should be changing, hopefully soon.

This site is an unpaid job and so things often take longer than most of us would like.

        - tye (but my friends call me "Tye")