And if you try to search for something more specific than just "sort", then search.cpan.org gives about the worst reaction possible. It searches for any hits that match any of your keywords and then sorts them alphabetically (it appears, the last times I tested). So you get the 2000 hits for "sort" plus another huge batch of hits for "external" or "large" or whatever, and the matches that include both keywords get no preferential position in the output.

Luckily, you can just skip search.cpan.org's stupid search technique and use google w/ "site:search.cpan.org". Compare: Using "large", search.cpan (sort large) completely misses the point (the first hit never even mentions "sort" and Sort::External is in the first page of results only because the "E" from "External" comes quite early in the alphabet) while google (site:search.cpan.org sort large) understands the idea and includes real hits, including Sort::External on the first page (our search terms are still too general). Using "huge" (a less common term), search.cpan (sort huge) does no better while google (site:search.cpan.org sort huge) gives us Sort::External as the very first match.

We should certainly keep the "perldoc" flavor of 'searching' at search.cpan.org, but the other searching should probably just be dropped and replaced with a form that uses google. The current "general" search is just sad.

- tye        

In reply to Re^5: Sorting a (very) large file (how not to search CPAN) by tye
in thread Sorting a (very) large file by condar

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