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Shocking news: Google can't find something

We have a little known feature in the debugger so I wanted to see where, if anywhere, it is documented, so naturally I used Google. It can't find it. Not because it doesnt exist, but because the thing I am looking for is “.load” : yes, that's a period in front of it. Google seems to strip the period, even if I quote the whole thing, so it finds “load”, which is not what I want.

Next I tried the VS2005 Index. No luck. Next I tried VS2005 Search. It found “load” but not “.load”.

For me the fact that Google can't find it is more shocking than the fact that their site went down last week.

Just to prove that “.load” does really exist, here are some pages that talk about it:

http://blogs.msdn.com/scottno/archive/2004/07/26/197757.aspx

http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/03/06/Bugslayer/default.aspx

The VS2005 beta1 docs describe it under “SOS Tool“ in the Index.

I remember when most search tools couldn't search for “C#”. That got fixed, but I seriously doubt that “.load” is going to be as popular as that.

Published Wednesday, August 04, 2004 5:30 PM by andypennell

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Wednesday, August 04, 2004 5:47 PM by Raj

# re: Shocking news: Google can't find something


The period (.) in a google search stands for a single character wildcard. So, I am sure the page you are looking for is in a page deep down in the search results.

I don't know how to escape the period so that it is not used as a wildcard.
Wednesday, August 04, 2004 6:08 PM by Ron Green

# re: Shocking news: Google can't find something

However ".load sos" works.
Wednesday, August 04, 2004 7:14 PM by ToddM

# re: Shocking news: Google can't find something

Raj -- no, it doesn't. The period is one of a class of 'phrase binding' characters (I just made up that term). It is treated as whitespace when searching, but forces order between the preceeding and succeding terms, provided there is no whitespace between the terms and the dot.

"this is a phrase" is the same as
this.is.a.phrase is the same as
this-is-a-phrase etc.

Google's web search does not handle ANY wildcards -- not even *
Wednesday, August 04, 2004 8:24 PM by Louis Parks

# re: Shocking news: Google can't find something

C# is only kind of fixed in my opinion. Even if it is fixed .NET surely isn't.
Wednesday, August 04, 2004 8:30 PM by Raj

# re: Shocking news: Google can't find something


The "*" wildcard is supported according to this page.

http://www.googleguide.com/crafting_queries.html (scroll down to the middle)

This page written May 7, 2004 lists both the "." and "*" operator.

http://www.informit.com/articles/article.asp?p=170880
Thursday, August 05, 2004 5:39 AM by Jason Burton

# re: Shocking news: Google can't find something

Use quotes around the word and the + oporator to make the whole phrase required.

+".load" site:blogs.msdn.com scottno

--jason

Thursday, August 05, 2004 6:10 AM by me

# re: Shocking news: Google can't find something

try .+load

note the + after the .
Friday, August 20, 2004 1:59 PM by hdtv receiver

# re: Shocking news: Google can't find something

Yeah, the .+load should work


http://www.hdtv-info.org

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