Google Code Search is now live, a
new service from Google designed to allow computer programmers and others seek
out computer code from across the web.
How is it different from regular Google web search? In general, regular web
search won’t open up executables and other programming files to index what’s
inside of them. Instead, a regular search would only find code that was
explicitly placed on web pages.
Google told me the new service has billions of lines of code indexed and that
it supports regular expression searches. The
FAQ gives you
further details.
Reason for the service? Google said it’s a combination of wanting to make an
important information type more accessible, especially for the heavy subset of
coders that already use Google. In addition, Google said it wants to help
further develop a coding community, so offering a good code search engine helps
with that.
Google’s not the only one in the code search engine space, though it pitches
having a bigger collection of code than other existing services. Coders will be
the judge in short order. Some other coding search engines to check out:
- Koders.com (see more info in
Koders Offers
Search For Open Source Code and
Conversation
with Co-Founder of Vertical Engine Koders.com) - Codase is (see short review in
Codase For
Seeking Open Source Code) - WSFinder (for seeking APIs,
see also Try
WSFinder To Find Web Services & APIs) - CodeHound
- Codase
- Krugle