diff --git a/Library/Homebrew/search.rb b/Library/Homebrew/search.rb
index 1a695ff620..fdd90f3ed6 100644
--- a/Library/Homebrew/search.rb
+++ b/Library/Homebrew/search.rb
@@ -4,7 +4,7 @@ module Homebrew
       if m = query.match(%r{^/(.*)/$})
         Regexp.new(m[1])
       else
-        /.*#{Regexp.escape(query)}.*/i
+        Regexp.new(query.chars.join('[^a-z\d]*'), Regexp::IGNORECASE)
       end
     rescue RegexpError
       raise "#{query} is not a valid regex."
diff --git a/Library/Homebrew/test/search_spec.rb b/Library/Homebrew/test/search_spec.rb
index 26236af472..f7be0b805f 100644
--- a/Library/Homebrew/test/search_spec.rb
+++ b/Library/Homebrew/test/search_spec.rb
@@ -55,11 +55,26 @@ describe Homebrew::Search do
     end
 
     it "correctly converts a query string to a regex" do
-      expect(mod.query_regexp("query")).to eq(/.*query.*/i)
+      expect(mod.query_regexp("query")).to eq(/q[^a-z\d]*u[^a-z\d]*e[^a-z\d]*r[^a-z\d]*y/i)
     end
 
     it "raises an error if the query is an invalid regex" do
       expect { mod.query_regexp("/+/") }.to raise_error(/not a valid regex/)
     end
+
+    it "correctly matches with special symbols" do
+      regex = mod.query_regexp("oo-ba")
+      expect(regex).to match("foo-bar")
+    end
+
+    it "correctly matches without special symbols" do
+      regex = mod.query_regexp("ooba")
+      expect(regex).to match("foo-bar")
+    end
+
+    it "keeps special symbols" do
+      regex = mod.query_regexp("foo-bar")
+      expect(regex).not_to match("foobar")
+    end
   end
 end