Fulltext search with <> characters

Having problems getting the following query to work. I want to match the actual string " to control word relevance.

SELECT * FROM (table)
WHERE MATCH (field) AGAINST ("+<foo><![CDATA[1850]" IN BOOLEAN MODE)

When I run this 开发者_开发百科it returns almost all records in the database, not just those which match the exact string.

AFAIK you can not use special characters in full text search indexes. It is limited to TEXT. (Words to be exact. For example you can have a list of most common words to be excepted form this index). You have to use LIKE if you are searching for pieces of code with special characters.