[vox-tech] [help@google.com: Re: [#19464334] Searching for dotfiles]

[Bill Kendrick]

On Thu, Jan 13, 2005 at 11:40:49AM -0800, Richard S. Crawford wrote:
> I've always thought it would be really cool if we could search Google
> using regular expressions.
> 

I think the problem here is how it's indexed.  If it sees ".forward",
it just sticks it in the pile of pages that contain the word "forward".

If you go to search "~/\.forward$", I think the best it could do is
extract a suitable keyword out of your regexp (e.g., "forward"), and then
find all the pages that contain it.  THEN, it would have to start regexp
searching all of their cached versions of those pages, which is really
a different part of their infrastructure, if I understand it.

I've got friends at Google, though, so it might be work asking them,
in case they're familiar with the search-engine side of things. :)

-bill!