This isn't specifically about Perl but since I'm sure some of you have worked with this, maybe you could help clear some things up.

I don't understand the logic behind site searches on how they work. When you type in a few words to search for, somehow the script will pull apart some pages and give you some results, right? How does it do that in such a timely manner?

My impression is for the search to work, it has to open each file (or node) and rip apart it's context THEN display the results. But if this were the case, how could it search all the nodes in a matter of seconds? Could it really open and read that many pages at one time?

It's really confusing to think of how Yahoo! pulls this off. They have millions of pages to search for but the results are still brought up in a matter of seconds. Can someone explain how searches are run?

Thank you, Wise Monks!



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sulfericacid

In reply to Searches by sulfericacid

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