Improvements to searching for special characters in programming languages (opens in new tab)

That specific example isn't actually true. Even with no prior history if you search "python" the first result is the programming language.

That's because Google is smart and despite the fact that more people know of Python as a snake, when somebody types just "python" into a search query, it's almost definitely true that they mean the programming language. Few people Google for types of snakes.

A similar thing is true for "ruby" and "rust".

When indexing documents (and querying for them), there is a process the terms go through, to split them up and then normalize them so they can be found easier. A trivial example is you want to find "can't" when someone searches for "cant". Typically special characters are removed for several reasons: the vocabulary of terms becomes smaller and saves space and time, you can ignore punctuation (like searching things that jut against parenthesis), you can remove accent marks and diacritics, and a host of other things.

This is hard because (a) you have to have contextual awareness of punctuation in certain places, like the '&' character in john&jane vs the logical &&. (b) your vocabulary of terms becomes larger - which is probably not a big deal for most folks but if you are Google then a 0.0001% increase in the vocab is a killer in space.

--EDIT-- The vocab increase is probably not as much as I noted above - but even adding a dozen terms can have an impact at Google's scale.

I know Hoogle exists, but that just searches one kind of documentation. Despite the cute name, it's not Google. You can't Hoogle an error message and see if anyone else got it.

Ah, Google's personalization of searches. Here's what I see:

Operators in C++ - TutorialsPoint https://www.tutorialspoint.com/cplusplus/cpp_operators.htm

Operators in C++ - Learning C++ in simple and easy steps : A beginner's tutorial ... Right shift AND assignment operator, C >>= 2 is same as C = C >> 2. ‎C++ Loop Types · ‎Conditional operator · ‎C++ Pointer Operators · ‎Increment operator Assignment operators - JavaScript | MDN https://developer.mozilla.org › ... › JavaScript reference › Expressions and operators

Feb 3, 2017 - An assignment operator assigns a value to its left operand based on the value of its right operand. ... Right shift assignment, x >>= y, x = x >> y. Operators in C and C++ - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operators_in_C_and_C%2B%2B

This is a list of operators in the C and C++ programming languages. All the operators listed exist in C++; the fourth column "Included in C", states whether an ...

Right Shift Assignment Operator (>>=) - MSDN - Microsoft https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/y9h99e01(v=vs.100)....

Using this operator is almost the same as specifying result = result >> expression, except that result is only evaluated once. The >>= operator shifts the bits of ...

<<= Operator (C# Reference) - MSDN - Microsoft https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ayt2kcfb.aspx

Jul 20, 2015 - except that x is only evaluated once. The << operator shifts x left by the number of bits specified by y . The <<= operator cannot be overloaded ...

C# Operators https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/6a71f45d.aspx

Jul 20, 2015 - x >>= y – right-shift assignment. Shift the value of x right by y places, store the result in x , and return the new value. => – lambda declaration. -= Operator (C# Reference)1 - MSDN - Microsoft https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/d31sybc9.aspx

Jul 20, 2015 - except that x is only evaluated once. The / operator is predefined for numeric types to perform division. The /= operator cannot be overloaded ...

What does this ">>=" operator mean in C? - Stack Overflow stackoverflow.com/questions/17769948/what-does-this-operator-mean-in-c

Jul 21, 2013 - unsigned long set; /set is after modified/ set >>= 1;. I found this in a ... The expression set >>= 1; means set = set >> 1; that is right shift bits of set ...

java - What does "|=" mean? (pipe equal operator) - Stack Overflow stackoverflow.com/questions/14295469/what-does-mean-pipe-equal-operator

Jan 12, 2013 - |= reads the same way as += . notification.defaults |= Notification.DEFAULT_SOUND; .... 2 <<= Left shift AND assignment operator C <<= 2 is same as C = C << 2 >>= Right shift AND assignment operator C >>= 2 is same as ...

C++ Operator Precedence - cppreference.com en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/language/operator_precedence

Oct 12, 2016 - Precedence, Operator, Description, Associativity. 1, :: Scope resolution ... For relational operators > and ≥ respectively. 9, == != For relational ...