When I search Google for "haskell ++ operator" or "ruby language @@", or anything similar, the punctuation often gets ignored completely. (However the punctuation in "c++" doesn't).
Is there a search engine or an option in Google somewhere that will allow me to search for things like this?
You can put quotes around it.
"Exact Thing To Search W/ cr@zy symb$$s"
I'd also check out the advanced search page.
You can't, google removes the ++ and @@ as part of its stemming process when it is indexing the pages.
On the google faqs you have:
- With some exceptions, punctuation is ignored (that is, you can't search for @#$%^&*()=+[]\ and other special characters).
Unfortunately I don't know of any web search engine that can do this (code search engines will work, but they'll only return code snippets).
Try to find alternate names for these operators. Queries like:
haskell ("plusplus" | "plus plus operator")
ruby language "double at"
php "paamayim nekudotayim"
might work.
Google Code Search lets you search by regex (including operator characters with \-escaping) and language filter. The code it searches is limited to opensource projects; but this should be plenty for finding examples of things.