Google Unveils Code Search

derek_farn writes, "Google now has a page that supports source code searching. I hope they extend it to be more programming-language aware (e.g., search for identifiers and functions) like the specialist code search sites (Krugle, Koders, and Codease), who probably now have very worried investors. I don't see any option to search for Cobol. I guess there is not a lot of Cobol source available on the Internet, even although there is supposed to be more Cobol source in existence than any other language (perhaps that statement is not true in the noughties)." From the Cnet.com article: "Google engineers, many of whom participate in open-source projects, already use these code searching capabilities internally. Since it is a Google Labs project, the company is not yet seeking to monetize searches through ads."

Comments

COBOL hasn't been topdog for a while

[BadAnalogyGuy]

VB has been the language with the most LOC since the early-mid 90's.

As scary as that sounds.

Re:COBOL hasn't been topdog for a while

[plopez]

Well... if we want to quibble... :)

Basic was intended as a teaching language and so the language incorporated lots of syntax and ideas from the 2 major languages of the time: COBOL and FORTRAN.

BASIC eventually begat that idiot bastard child 'Visual Basic' and syntacticly hasn't changed much since. So you could say that there is a lot of COBOL in 'Visual Basic'. Sure, it became object focused and now OO, but it still resembles COBOL. So COBOL lives on, as Visual Basic. It will not die :)

And while I am on the soap box :) .....

So much of the code I have seen is just COBOL in drag. Java, VB, C++, C# etc. just COBOL programs in drag. Most people have not really changed their mindset since COBOL.

Case in point:
I showed my boss who is supposed to be an OO programmer how to abstract out a data access layer so that the layer knows nothing about the request sent to it or the exact DB structure and the requesting class knew nothing of the database. I used a few of the nicer features of C# and .Net.

My boss, supposedly a programmer didn't 'get it'. The upshot beign we ended up writing one class per DB table (as opposed to one table manager class total) and the results could have been quicker and easier in COBOL.

I will now step down off the soap box.

Re:COBOL hasn't been topdog for a while

[locoluis]

True. And if there's any COBOL code on the Internet, it can be found using the following search terms:

"IDENTIFICATION DIVISION" "DATA DIVISION" DISPLAY PROGRAM-ID SECTION

No need for Google to develop a special search for what look less like a computer program and more like a plain text file.

Restricted Use Due to Copyrights

[eldavojohn]

I made a simple search for "fade file:.js" in order to find a javascript function that would fade a div or table or anything really (I know scriptaculous offers this already, just curious as to what's out there). I found something but the header of the file read:

All Code herein is Copyright 2005 Match.com
Do not copy, reproduce, reuse or sell any code herein
without the express, written consent of Match.com.
For information contact webmaster@match.com.
All Rights Reserved.

Which is expected. However, that means this tool isn't useful for finding a method or function or class I can use and then using it ... it seems to be restricted to one of two uses. If I'm looking for code that does natural language parsing, I could hope a comment somewhere contains NLP as a description of what's going on. Or, I could look for libraries out there with methods and then search for those methods to see how other people used them to get an idea of how they work. The vast majority of this code seems to be just web development front-end code at least from the few searches I've done. Too bad, that's a very small part of programming.

Useful to whom?

[kjart]

Whenever I search for something code related on the web it's usually because I want to know how to do something. In such cases I dont really know what the code itself would be (i.e. the reason why I'm searching) so this wouldn't help at all. I suppose if you were looking for specific code it could be useful, but why would you be doing that? That would likely be your own code, so wouldn't a simple grep be easier?

I'm sure I'm missing something here - Google doesn't (usually) release useless new products :)

Not that useful

[fellm]

As a programmer who needs to solve a problem I need a place to find answers to the problem I am solving. Searching for a code won't do it because I am looking for an answer and not how to code it. To find answers I use Omgili - it is a vertical search engine that search ten of thousands of forums and millions of discussions. Usually someone already asked my question and hopefully it has an answer. It is highly recommended for troubleshooting and specific problems/questions.

searched for backdoor password

[stodderen]

found these perhaps interesting: http://www.google.com/codesearch?q=+%22backdoor+pa ssword%22+show:jRPhp0ZHKTo:ci7RRg0kwvU:Xm5ri9nsh7w &sa=N&cd=4&ct=rc&cs_p=http://ftp.osuosl.org/pub/Fr eeBSD/distfiles/flash-0.9.5.tar.gz&cs_f=flash-0.9. 5/flash.1#a0 http://www.google.com/codesearch?q=+%22backdoor+pa ssword%22+show:1lII5NN2DDk:enqxwGER2sU:KEOg6Taq6iU &sa=N&cd=6&ct=rc&cs_p=http://ftp.osuosl.org/pub/Fr eeBSD/distfiles/xsw1.23.tgz&cs_f=xsw1.23/server/ne tlogin.c#a0 http://www.google.com/codesearch?q=+%22backdoor+pa ssword%22+show:L4YZQESJxWo:Yryh5NFJxw0:UVx7zLw_NI8 &sa=N&cd=9&ct=rc&cs_p=http://www.mudmagic.com/code s/dl/2463/copper-3.tar.gz&cs_f=Copper3/nanny.c#a0

Re:Well this answered a question for me...

[Roger_Wilco]

I did a brief survey on "I hate [X]", and got the following:

perl 9
java 20
c 8000
c++ 11
c# 1
lisp 0
scheme 0
elisp 0
fortran 3

Looks like John McCarthy wins.

Re:I like this search better - fucking funny as

[tkittel]

I agree, it is rather funny. My favourite is so far:

/usr/src/linux/arch/sparc/kernel/ptrace.c: /* Fuck me gently with a chainsaw... */

But I also stumbled upon this little gem in /usr/src/linux/net/core/netfilter.c:

/* netfilter.c: look after the filters for various protocols.
* Heavily influenced by the old firewall.c by David Bonn and Alan Cox.
*
* Thanks to Rob `CmdrTaco' Malda for not influencing this code in any
* way.
*

Anyone knows if there is a story behind this comment? Is it a private joke on taco, or did he piss them off?

Re:the one thing everyone will search

[nschubach]

Not to fuel the fire or anything... http://www.google.com/codesearch?q=%5E%5Ba-zA-Z%5D (%5B.%5D%3F(%5B%5B%3Aalnum%3A%5D_-%5D%2B)*)%3F%40( %5B%5B%3Aalnum%3A%5D%5C-_%5D%2B%5C.)%2B%5Ba-zA-Z%5 D%7B2%2C4%7D%24&btnG=Search&hl=en&lr=

This is great: finding algorithms

[chroma]

I just had a need for this very thing. I've been looking for an implementation of the Minkowski sum in Java. And Google had it. So if you need to implement a particular algorithm that someone else might have already implemented, this is the way to find it.

I can't find any of the software with my name on it that's on SourceForge, though.

Re:"Given enough eyeballs...

[ggvaidya]

Some of those are a hack around the VC 6 "for loop doesn't scope as per ANSI" bug. This forum post explains when its used.

K&R vs. Alii

[zobier]

Indent style searches: K&R about 5,900,000 Alli (Actually, this is a bit broken! Anyone worked out how to enable multiline mode?) about 11,100,000