Heline – Code search for modern developer | Hacker News Reader

Heline – Code search for modern developer

heline.dev

30 pointsahmadrosid16 comments

Size of index is pretty low, to be honest. First thing I tried was 0x5F3759DF, and it found nothing. It deletes non-quoted symbols such as + from queries and pretty much ignores parentheses. I tried few more queries and came out disappointed, I don't think it is acceptable as code search at all, especially as a modern one.

I tried “npm ci” and only got 5 results. Github returns 8 million.

Hello @terafo! Thank you for checking out this project. At the moment, the index is still very small at around 100 repositories. I will add more repositories to the index and improve the search query.

Besides creating this project, I'm looking for a job that involves full text search, if anyone has an opening please let me know.

Thank you.

Sourcegraph CEO here. This is an awesome thing you built. We’re hiring people to help us bring code search to every dev. Check out https://about.sourcegraph.com/jobs/ and email me (sqs@sourcegraph.com) if you want any pointers.

Searching for exact code matches is super useful while coding. Good to see another tool for this.

So far, the only tool I know that offers it is grep.app.

It seems the grep.app index is bigger at the moment? For example:

https://grep.app/search?q=boolean%20isCyclic%28

https://heline.dev/search?q=boolean%20isCyclic%28

Github also has a code-search feature. It's returning two orders of magnitude more results for "boolean isCyclic" than is grep.app:

https://github.com/search?q=%22boolean+isCyclic%28%22+size%3...

Sourcegraph (disclaimer: where I work) code search returns ~2700 results (more than the other 2 linked) and properly matches the "(" (which GitHub's current code search incorrectly ignores).

https://sourcegraph.com/search?q=context:global+boolean+isCy...

(Still, awesome to see more code search tools get built! Most devs aren't using code search and have no idea why it's awesome, so anything that changes that is a huge help.)

Terrific, thank you!

Wow, the Sourcegraph search is returning results I couldn’t find yesterday on GitHub. Bookmarked.

Doesn't it ignore special characters like : , . ( ) etc.?

I remember struggling to find function definitions because `f(` would be treated like `f`

I've also not found a way to filter out tests. I know tests are also code, but most of the time I am not interested in them.

You've got to put the search string in quotes.

There's also cs.github.com which is fantastic and in beta at the moment.

I was inspired by grep.app in making this project.

This would benefit from setting expectations. Maybe show the number of reps indexed below the search form, and a description. Or something that calls this a beta or work in progress.

OP, Could you describe how it works internally?

other than bigger index, I'd recommend a wait time when user is typing.

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