I'm working with the fulltext search engine of MSSQL 2008 which expects a search string like this:

("keyword1" AND "keyword2*" OR "keyword3")

My users are entering things like this:

engine 2009
"san francisco"     hotel december xyz
stuff* "in miami"   1234
something or "something else"

I'm trying to transform these into fulltext engine compatible strings like these:

("engine" AND "2009")
("san francisco" AND "hotel" AND "december" AND "xyz")
("stuff*" "in miami" "1234")
("something" OR "something else")

I have a really difficult time with this, tried doing it using counting quotation marks, spaces and inserting etc. but my code looks like horrible for-and-if vomit.

Can someone help?