Google Announces Search Engine For Searching Software Code

Google has announced the introduction of Code Search, which will allow software developers to search for programming code to improve existing software or create new programs.

While not for the faint of heart (i.e., non-programmers), developers can use Code Search to seek out specific programming terms or computer languages (JAVA, C++) and access compressed code to locate specific features. An application programming interface (API) is also provided to create an XML feed based on a specific query to allow third-party developers to integrate a code search box into their development tools. More impressive is the fact that users can narrow searches to find software code based on specific licensing requirements, which could help new programs to avoid future patent infringement issues.

The service claims to have indexed several billions lines of code from archives hosted on the web, as well as software control repositories from services like SourceForge and Google Code which host open source projects. The searches are conducted using the standard Google interface, but results are for machine-readable phrases such as "go{2}gle" "hello,\ world" or "^int printk."

To see Google Code Search, click here.