813524 - DXR: Support case insensitive searches

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Webtools Graveyard :: DXR, defect)

Description

[Schalk Neethling [:espressive]]

Support case insensitive searches. This bug very well be related: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=487085

Comment 1

[Erik Rose [:erik][:erikrose]]

MXR does this, defaulting to case-sensitive but showing a "Case Sensitive" checkbox on the page returned after form submission.

Comment 2

[Erik Rose [:erik][:erikrose]]

Taras and I came to the conclusion that we should be case-insensitive by default but have a checkbox or something. All-or-nothing case sensitiviity is sufficient; we don't need to be able to control it per term.

Comment 3

[(no longer active)]

(In reply to comment #2)
> Taras and I came to the conclusion that we should be case-insensitive by
> default but have a checkbox or something. All-or-nothing case sensitiviity is
> sufficient; we don't need to be able to control it per term.

One nice heuristic could be to be case insensitive by default if the query is all in lower case, and case sensitive if the input is in mixed case.  If I search for "nsString" there is a high chance that I meant to do a case sensitive search.

Comment 4

[Erik Rose [:erik][:erikrose]]

I've always pulled back from that because it's hard to discover, but a solution just occurred to me: we can automatically make the "Case sensitive" checkbox check itself as soon as you hit a capital letter. That way, it's (hopefully) obvious what it's thinking.

Comment 5

[(no longer active)]

(In reply to comment #4)
> I've always pulled back from that because it's hard to discover, but a solution
> just occurred to me: we can automatically make the "Case sensitive" checkbox
> check itself as soon as you hit a capital letter. That way, it's (hopefully)
> obvious what it's thinking.

Sounds good!

Comment 6

[(no longer active)]

Erik, any idea when you can get around to implementing this?  I think this is currently the #1 difficulty I have when using DXR.  Especially when searching for DOM function names which are CamelCase in C++ bug exposed as camelCase to JS.  THis means that I need to search twice in two different tabs for both variants of those names.

Comment 7

[Erik Rose [:erik][:erikrose]]

Ehsan, thank you for reminding me it's important! That really helps, since I don't get to watch over people's shoulders much. Being optimistic, I might be able to squeeze that in toward the end of September. The quarter until now has been full of infra improvements (like not having a day of downtime every time a tree build fails) and scoping out the upcoming UI work, which Schalk has just started on.

In general, my prioritized to-do list is at https://github.com/erikrose/status/wiki#to-do. I work on it roughly from the bottom up.

Hang in there; things are coming at me from every direction, but I can at least make sure that my DXR attention is spent on high-value additions. Cheers!

Comment 8

[(no longer active)]

Thanks!  FWIW this was basically as a reminder, with some let's-fix-Ehsan's-workflow sneaked into it.  ;-)

Comment 9

[[github robot]]

Commit pushed to master at https://github.com/mozilla/dxr

https://github.com/mozilla/dxr/commit/27f15f3313fa9af7500fef482f2e948c0deff7c1
Add (and default to) case-insensitive searching for free text. Fixes bug 813524.

The checkbox does not, at the moment, affect structural queries.

Comment 10

[Erik Rose [:erik][:erikrose]]

We should see this after tonight's indexing run. Give it a whirl, Ehsan, and tell me what you think! I'd also be interested in your opinion on whether we ought to make this affect structural queries (e.g. function:whatever, type-ref:whatever, etc.).

Comment 11

[Erik Rose [:erik][:erikrose]]

Due to a bug in the build script, which is being fixed as we speak, the new version won't be deployed for a few more hours.

Comment 12

[(no longer active)]

(In reply to comment #11)
> Due to a bug in the build script, which is being fixed as we speak, the new
> version won't be deployed for a few more hours.

OK, can you please let me know when I should start trying it out?

FWIW I do think that it makes sense to extend this to structural queries, especially since our IDL compiler turns lower camel case function names into upper camel case functions.

Comment 13

[Erik Rose [:erik][:erikrose]]

What I should have asked: at the moment, [most] structural queries are case-insensitive. Would it be useful to you to have them be case-sensitive when the "case-sensitive" box is checked?

Comment 14

[(no longer active)]

(In reply to comment #13)
> What I should have asked: at the moment, [most] structural queries are
> case-insensitive. Would it be useful to you to have them be case-sensitive when
> the "case-sensitive" box is checked?

Yes.

Comment 15

[Erik Rose [:erik][:erikrose]]

Yay consistency! :-D We'll head that direction.

Comment 16

[Erik Rose [:erik][:erikrose]]

Filed bug 948613 for that.

Comment 17

[Erik Rose [:erik][:erikrose]]

Ehsan, it's all up and ready to try!