From owner-freebsd-chat Tue Sep 12 14:32:23 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from brass.ftech.net (mrtg.ftech.net [195.200.0.119]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A11FA37B423 for ; Tue, 12 Sep 2000 14:32:21 -0700 (PDT) Received: from logger5.ftech.net ([195.200.0.64] helo=relay1.ftech.net) by brass.ftech.net with esmtp (Exim 3.16-ftechp6 #1) id 13Yxf9-0004IF-00; Tue, 12 Sep 2000 22:32:19 +0100 Received: from dmg.ftech.co.uk ([195.200.9.208] helo=dmg.parse.net) by relay1.ftech.net with esmtp (Exim 3.16-ftechp6 #1) id 13Yxf8-0004SI-00; Tue, 12 Sep 2000 22:32:19 +0100 Received: from elf (elf.putney.parse.net [10.0.0.10]) by dmg.parse.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id WAA58571; Tue, 12 Sep 2000 22:31:40 +0100 (BST) (envelope-from goddard@acm.org) Message-Id: <3.0.3.32.20000912223155.007e8e60@dmg.parse.net> X-Sender: dmg@dmg.parse.net X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0.3 (32) Date: Tue, 12 Sep 2000 22:31:55 +0100 To: Joseph Scott From: David Goddard Subject: Re: FreeBSD mailing list search... Cc: chat@FreeBSD.ORG In-Reply-To: <39BE3FE9.80E379BA@owp.csus.edu> References: <39BDCFB1.E4095297@tdx.co.uk> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org At 07:38 12/09/00 -0700, Joseph Scott wrote: > I've pretty much given up on the search at freebsd.org. For better >or for worse I usually just go to www.deja.com/usenet and do a search >there. I know what you mean - apart from not supporting proper boolean searching (someone correct me if I'm wrong!), I just don't have confidence that the FreeBSD search is returning what I want. For example, from looking at the web pages, I have no idea how it handles the non-word characters (such as / - % ! etc.) that you might want to include in your search terms. Does it match them. I'm also pretty sure that proper regexps don't work, with only a wildcard at the end permitted. Likewise, there's no indication as to whether you can escape characters like * . It makes the search facility offered by the company I work for seem not so bad, which is saying something :-) Sadly, the GeoCrawler search facility appears to suffer from the same lack of transparency. I tend to use my web search engine of choice (Google ahead of the (amazingly still available) plaintext AltaVista) and hope that they have indexed enough. A glance at http://searchenginewatch.com/resources/software.html suggests that decent, free, stuff is available - is the search facility actively maintained? Dave To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message