Ugh, I hate “ and “. Never try copying from a Word document to VSCode. I wondered if it was related to using UK or US keyboards, but I get the same problem on my iphone, using the UK or US keyboards. The touch, or bluetooth keyboard on the iphone and ipad defaults to curly double brackets when entering text into the search field using the ASP shortcode. But using a long touch and selecting the type of double bracket, the default then is straight double quotes and the search works.
The problem is an iOS default since 2017 and is mobile-specific due to rich text on mobile keypads. On the iphone and iPad, the ASP search text input field is supoporting rich text with emojis et al. The issue appears to be as a result of a new feature in iOS 11, Smart Punctuation, that automatically turns straight into double quotes. This has been the default since 2017!
If the url is typed directly into the URL field of Safari, the double quote is interpreted as straight as rich text is not supported as it has to be a url safe field.
The solution does not look to be obvious, though I wonder if the problem stems from the earlier fix, which now with mobiles supporting rich text input and smart punctuation as default, is showing up this latent issue. A majority of mobile users so not need rich text input and like me were expecting the input behaviour to be similar across desktop and mobile. One of the challenges of creating websites that work across mobile and desktop. The behaviour that ASP wants goes against the defaults of iOS. The direction Apple are traveling in with the merger of iOS and MacOS, iPad Pro etc will likely make it visible to more users.
I will put the patch in and at the same time it would be good to add this to the ASP knowledge base. A more nuanced solution would be good to support iOS.
Regards Steve