query_extract cannot handle phrases as field values

Search.module's query extraction regexps don't handle field values with spaces in them. This means we can't do things like term:"red dwarf" and are limited to tid:4711. Here is the function in question:

/**
 * Extract a module-specific search option from a search query. e.g. 'type:book'
 */
function search_query_extract($keys, $option) {
  if (preg_match('/(^| )'. $option .':([^ ]*)( |$)/i', $keys, $matches)) {
    return $matches[2];
  }
}

Here is code I wrote for ApacheSolr which is one potential solution to the problem. The solution involves quoting any phrases (and escaping quotes inside phrases \").

    /**
   * This is copied from search module. The search module implementation doesn't
   * handle quoted terms correctly (bug) and this function is copied here until
   * I have the bugfix perfected, at which point a patch will be submitted to search
   * module with the goal of removing the function here.
   *
   * Extract a module-specific search option from a search query. e.g. 'type:book'
   */
  static function query_extract($keys, $option) {
    $pattern = '/(^| )'. $option .':(\"([^\"]*)\")/i';
    preg_match_all($pattern, $keys, $matches);
    if (!empty($matches[2])) {
      // The preg_replace removes beginning and trailing quotations.
      return preg_replace('/^"|"$/', '', $matches[2]);
    }
    $pattern = '/(^| )'. $option .':([^ ]*)/i';
    if (preg_match_all($pattern, $keys, $matches)) {
      if (!empty($matches[2])) {
        return $matches[2];
      }
    }
  }