Is there such a thing anymore?
In the early days of the web, I remember being able to use real actual
boolean logic, like as in multiple parenthesis, etc.
Is there anything that will understand that these days?
How about regular expressions (to the quality of Agent newsreader, or
better)?
Google just doesn't cut it on that.
It also doesn't like alot of parenthesis, commands within commands, etc.
It seems to take them, but if you play with it you can see that it's
screwing up because of the results.

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see.my.sig.4.addr@nowhere.com.invalid wrote:

> Is there such a thing anymore?

Regular expressions: I do not think so. I can recall a recent discussion on
this topic.

Boolean: Google searches a boolean space if I remember correctly, but the
use of pluses, minuses and the like appears rather weak. Altavista, who
used to have good support for this rich syntax, are generally weak at
providing good results.

> In the early days of the web, I remember being able to use real actual
> boolean logic, like as in multiple parenthesis, etc.
> Is there anything that will understand that these days?

Judging by the queries that I see, nobody ever uses them. Far less than 1%
as a matter of fact. I gave up on it myself.

> How about regular expressions (to the quality of Agent newsreader, or
> better)?
> Google just doesn't cut it on that.
> It also doesn't like alot of parenthesis, commands within commands, etc.
> It seems to take them, but if you play with it you can see that it's
> screwing up because of the results.

I would love to see a regular expression search on the Web. It can be a
priceless resource for programmers or for those who do ancestry (or just
arbitrary names) searches. Algorithms exist, e.g. D-M Soundex, but they are
just too computationally expensive to search the entire Web with.

Roy

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Roy S. Schestowitz
http://Schestowitz.com