Monday, February 13, 2012

[jzjxhgmq] Searching source code for functionality

Given a body of source code, search for code with a particular functionality.

This is a hairy problem; however, I think it is necessary for a healthy bazaar-like open source ecosystem.

It's tricky enough to formally specify a "particular functionality" I'm imagining AI search algorithms which can scan and "understand" code.  We also care about how correct, how fast, how easy to modify, how easy to use.  "Close" results might also be useful if you are willing to modify.

Including people in the loop is one way to do it; that's the way it is done now.  People can label things.  There may be experts you can ask who are familiar with a large amount of code in a particular field, though you do need to somehow convince the expert to give time and attention to your question.

A giant unified wiki for all open source code might be nice.

1 comment :

Anonymous said...

There is a site: http://rosettacode.org that has code in multiple languages.

Perhaps if you used some kind of structured logic to describe the programs there, you could search that site for various code you are talking about.