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searching question

  • 22-02-2006 3:47pm
    #1
    Khannie
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 37,485 ✭✭✭✭


    Ok...this has happened me before and now it's starting to annoy me.....:mad:

    I enter the following on a search engine:

    ".a" versus ".so" (I'm trying to find out what the difference is between ".a" files and ".so" files (both unix library file types)

    The . gets dropped.

    I add a + symbol which basically means "force inclusion of this". Still no joy. The . gets dropped.

    Can anyone help me out? I RTFM'd but no joy.


Comments

  • #2
    0utshined
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,746 ✭✭✭0utshined


    That's an interesting question Khannie and something I've come across myself before. I thought it was going to be simple but after searching about all i've come up with is this.

    My gut reaction was to use wildcards but it looks like neither Google nor Dogpile allow them. Well, to the public anyway. This link would seem to indicate that employees are able to use more options in their searches than us proles : http://ask.metafilter.com/mefi/20374 (third and third last post). I think you know at least one person working there so they might be able to shed some light on it for you?
    I remember altavista used to allow it, about 5 years ago, but I tried it there and no joy.

    I did manage to find a search engine that does allow limited wildcard searching : http://www.exalead.com/search/C=0/?2p=Help.2 . It's not going to help your search though as a . is used for a single character. Maybe a mail to their support box could tell you how to escape that usage?

    I'm sure it'd be quite possible to write a script that could interface with a search engine to do what your looking for but for the time invested and quality of results I don't think it'd be worth it.

    To answer your attempted search though, these two sites should give you the answer your looking for : http://extensions.pndesign.cz/ and http://www.sharpened.net/helpcenter/extensions.php

    They aren't very detailed but from my reading of it .a can only be used in one program wheras .so is similar to a windows .DLL and can be linked by many programs. I await correction on this.


  • #3
    Khannie
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 37,485 ✭✭✭✭Khannie


    Thanks Outshined.

    I eventually did find out that .a files have to be statically linked into a program (so you were right).

    I remember altavista searching for what you told it to also. I used to have a part-time job that was all about searching and in the days before google, altavista was the king if you knew how to use it.

    It's a real pity that it strips out part of your search. This is about the 5th time it's happened to me and it's fairly irritating.


  • #4
    stevenmu
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 9,689 Mod ✭✭✭✭stevenmu


    I've noticed this too and it's a pain in the ass. I read somewhere that it's because it would have to assume that it's part of a document path.

    Ideally google would pick some other character which could be used for indexing, say #, then a content creator writing a page about .so file types could mention #so in it's meta-tags, we could then search for #so, but I guess it's not something they've had much demand for.


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