Re: Indexed search with grep-like output

[Lennart Borgman]

On Sun, Jan 2, 2011 at 3:09 AM, Stefan Monnier <address@hidden> wrote:
>> I have just added a file util/idxsearch.el to nXhtml that searches via
>> an index and gives a grep-like output.
> [...]
>> Do we want this kind indexed search in Emacs?
>
> I think we already have something along these lines with M-x locate, and
> there are others for specific backends (like id-utils).  I'm not sure to
> what extent the UI can be shared between the various search engines, but
> it would be good to try and come up with one (or a small set) of
> commands that can dispatch to any/various backends.  Then id-utils.el
> could simply provide the GNU id backend for that command.

What I am saying is we could probably do it the other way round: Use
the same backend for the functionality of locate, id-util and in
addition free text search.

With just a little bit tweaking it is there in idxsearch.el in nXhtml.
(Though it requires an indexed search engine (which should be there
already in most cases I believe) and ruby.)