Google-styled text searching
 

I wanted to run this idea on the forum before formally submitting it as a feature request.

Background: When I use Google (or most search engines) for a phrase, the search results not only include pages containing the exact phrase (aside from differing capitalizations), but it also includes pages containing a fuzzy match of the phrase. The fuzzy match often includes punctuation and other non-alphanumeric characters in the whitespace of the searched phrase.

Example: I may do a Google search for the phrase "so fast son". The search results include sentences containing that exact phrase. It also matches other phrases like "...not so fast, son..." and "...so fast. Son..." When I view any of these pages with a fuzzy match, I cannot easily find them in OW. The regular search does an near-exact (when it comes to spaces) match. The regular expression is not trivial to construct (and not easy to memorize!), but it's possible. So I'd like to see OW provide another search method that does the hard work (using regular expressions, etc.) to replicate a Google-style text search on these pages.

Thoughts?

I guess it depends on what you usually search for. Personally, I prefer exact phrase. Perhaps it's because I send a lot of time in a text editor and have adapted my search style to better suit exact phrase.

For example, if I search for "foo.bar" I want it to find "foo.bar" not "foo bar" or "foo. Bar"

One of the big reasons I use OW is to debug web sites. Often I work on sites that are dynamic and a bug in the code could reside in any number of files. So I view source in OW, edit and redisplay. Then I can debug it as a whole rather than each individual piece. I find the bug then fix the appropriate file. I'll use find & replace as well.