Say no to grep, say hello to "real" code searching with Sando Code Search Extension

The post presents Sando as a Visual Studio extension for code search that uses Lucene.NET instead of grep-like matching. It emphasizes ranked results, multi-term search, auto-complete, spelling correction, and fast searches on large codebases.

Reading notes

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• Sando is described as an open source Visual Studio extension that uses Lucene.NET for code indexing and search.
• The post contrasts grep-like regular expression search with Lucene-based search.
• In the Linux kernel demo, FindInFiles searched 47,407 files in about one minute and forty seconds and returned no matches for the sample query.
• The same Linux search with Sando returned results almost instantly.
• Sando pre-indexes source code, which costs about 50 minutes for the Linux source tree, but later updates and branch switches take only a few seconds of indexing.
• For medium-sized projects, initial indexing usually finishes in seconds.
• Sando can index its own source code in less than ten seconds.
• The extension searches C, C++, C#, and XAML.
• Its features include literal searches, symbol searches, google-style searches, preview with highlighted terms, code editor highlighting, auto-completion, auto-correction, auto-recommendation, and a word cloud.
• The post says the project wants help from developers with refactoring, bug fixing, and technical evangelism.