There’s been a lot of talk of all the hacks & odd searches you can do on Google Code Search. Interesting, amusing and maybe a little scary. All of it clever. Clever is the first pass at a new tool, let’s get on to the boring stuff! (Why does that interest me so much?)
I’ve wanted more times than I can count to tell Google that I mean to search for source. It’s not as if you can add the name of the language - “C” or “C++” - to a normal search query and get anything meaningful. The obvious and canonical use of a tool like this is to find an example of code that does what you’re trying to do. The simplest thing would be examples of a particular function or class in use. Maybe you want to see a JTable instantiated and used. Maybe you need to know more about using the PCMCIA bus in Windows drivers. Okay, that search doesn’t work so well for closed source…
Read the rest of “Browsing Code with Google Code Search”…