[HN Gopher] Searching for "notepad" on DuckDuckGo yields zero re...
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Searching for "notepad" on DuckDuckGo yields zero results
Author : massinstall
Score : 66 points
Date : 2023-09-05 19:24 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (duckduckgo.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (duckduckgo.com)
| snerc wrote:
| What causes this?
| massinstall wrote:
| I have no idea, but equally curious.
| superhumanuser wrote:
| They used to have this thing where developers could build
| Instant Answers through a program called DuckDuckHack.
|
| It would load a carousel at the top with results for like jobs,
| recipes, etc.
|
| It used regex to match the search query. Looks like they have a
| bad one.
| nipperkinfeet wrote:
| I feel like Google has the same issue. Nowadays, searching for
| anything on Google yields between 3 and 17 results. Few years
| ago, I received millions of results for the same searches.
| notorandit wrote:
| "Windows os" instead yields just nonsense
| sys32768 wrote:
| For that query, the Chrome developer tools console spits an error
| like so:
|
| >d.7527c434450544045365.js:1 Uncaught (in promise) SyntaxError:
| Invalid regular expression:
| /^(https?://)?([\w\\.-_]*\\.)?notepad++\\./: Nothing to repeat
| (at
| Svip wrote:
| Was someone trying to be funny, to change a "notepad" search
| for "notepad++", forgetting that + has a specific meaning in
| regex? Same error occurs with a search for "notepad++", though,
| but not "notepad+", funnily enough.
| dylan604 wrote:
| wouldn't this be worse for not having the user provided
| search query sanitized for special characters?
| Svip wrote:
| My assumption is wrong. As others have noted, it's clearly
| parsing the title of the first result wrong. Edit: It's the
| parsing of the title of the infobox.
| badrabbit wrote:
| Looks like a regex to detect notepad++ in a url that didn't
| escape the +'s? Weird, maybe a sponsorship thing
| jzig wrote:
| Yep they need to escape every character in the string not
| just the plus signs
| jzig wrote:
| If you set a breakpoint there, the value it is trying to
| replace is "Notepad++" rather than "notepad", gotten from the
| Heading of "http://www.notepad-plus-plus.org" further up in the
| logic chain. Looks like the plus signs are incorrectly being
| added to the RegEx
| keb_ wrote:
| Unrelated to this issue, but I get peeved when HN commenters rave
| how DuckDuckGo results are far superior to Google's, and yet the
| other day I entered "DuckDNS" on DDG, and it was nowhere to be
| scene in the top 3 pages. Meanwhile on Google and Brave Search,
| it is the first result.
| letmevoteplease wrote:
| Seems to happen with any query containing "otepad".
| devonnull wrote:
| Unless you type in something like _Windows Notepad_ or _paper
| notepad_ , which does return results.
|
| Strange, very strange.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| As does "tepad" though "epad" does return results.
| yegg wrote:
| Hi all (CEO & Founder, DuckDuckGo here). Looks like something may
| have broken in a release that went out today -- it is triggering
| a JS error. We're looking into it now and should have it resolved
| soon.
|
| UPDATE: this should be fixed now.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| I feel like the crowd of e-rubberneckers that gathered here
| made it seem like a bigger bug than it was...
| Gerard0 wrote:
| Hello! Why has DDG gotten so worse lately? I thought it was
| just me but I keep reading the same experience on HN. There is
| no way you don't know about this?
|
| Asking as a long time user and at a time even DDG evangelist.
|
| Cheers!
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| I signed up for Kagi finally. Still figuring out if it's
| worth it, but the more important thing is that I was moved to
| even consider it and do it.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Fixed for me (UK), would be interesting to hear what the error
| was. I did so love the time when you were developing DDG and
| posting to HN about your progress and getting suggestions from
| the community and whatnot. So glad it worked out for you.
| yegg wrote:
| Thanks! It was a regex error.
| throwitaway156 wrote:
| Similarly to DNS, its always regex.
| daqhris wrote:
| Thanks for acknowledging it and sharing helpful info. It seemed
| bizarre for a short moment.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| Using POST, HTTP/1.0 and lite.duckduckgo.com, with no Javascript
| of course, I got results. Not suggesting any of those are
| requirements. I'm just reporting that the no results experience
| is not universal.
|
| Here is the first page of results:
| https://notepad-plus-plus.org/
| https://onlinenotepad.org/notepad
| https://apps.microsoft.com/store/detail/9MSMLRH6LZF3?hl=en-
| us&gl=US https://notepad-plus-plus.org/downloads/v8.5/
| https://sourceforge.net/projects/notepadplusplus.mirror/
| https://notepad.js.org/ https://notepad-plus-
| plus.org/downloads/v8.1.9.3/ https://notepad-plus-
| plus.org/downloads/v8.1/ https://support.microsoft.com/en-
| us/windows/help-in-notepad-4d68c388-2ff2-0e7f-b706-35fb2ab88a8c
| https://www.techspot.com/downloads/2010-notepad.html
| https://github.com/notepad-plus-plus
| https://www.onlinenotepad.io/ https://anotepad.com/
| https://www.howtogeek.com/902619/open-notepad-in-windows/
| https://notepad.plus/ https://community.notepad-plus-
| plus.org/ https://www.digitalcitizen.life/start-notepad-
| windows/ https://notepad.uptodown.com/windows
| https://www.dictionary.com/browse/notepad http://www.my-
| notepad.net/ https://notepad.id.uptodown.com/windows
| https://notepad-classic-windows-10.en.softonic.com/
|
| Below is a quick script for DuckDuckGo searching, if only want
| first page of results. yy025 makes HTTP from URLs. yy046 URL-
| encodes input, e.g., "+" to %2B. The address 127.22.10.55 is a
| TLS forward proxy. usage: echo query
| string|1.sh > 1.htm firefox ./1.htm
| links -no-connect ./1.htm #!/bin/sh
| h=duckduckgogg42xjoc72x3sjasowoarfbgcmvfimaftt6twagswzczad.onion
| h=lite.duckduckgo.com read x;
| x=q=$(echo "$x"|yy046); export httpMethod=POST;
| export Content_Type=application/x-www-form-urlencoded;
| export Content_Length=${#x}; export httpVersion=1.0;
| export Connection=close; echo
| https://$h/lite/|yy025|if sed w/dev/stderr;then
| echo $x;echo $x >&2;fi \ |socat stdio,ignoreeof
| tcp:127.22.10.55:80
| jampa wrote:
| It seems that anything that returns "++" (EDIT: in the "About"
| box), in this case "Notepad++", breaks their internal regex
| because it seems not to be sanitized properly
|
| The breaking code using chrome dev tools seems to be:
|
| n = new RegExp("^(https?://)?([\\\w\\\\.-_] _\\\\.)? " +
| o.toLowerCase().replace(/[-\s]/g, "") + "\\\\.");
|
| In this case "o" is "Notepad++" which might be the first result.
|
| The browser returns this error:
|
| Invalid regular expression:
| /^(https?://)?([\w\\.-_]_\\.)?notepad++\\./: Nothing to repeat
|
| Also happens with C++
| https://duckduckgo.com/?q=c%2B%2B&t=ffab&ia=web
| Svip wrote:
| Curious that the error does not occur when searching for
| "Notepad+":
| https://duckduckgo.com/?q=notepad%2B&t=ffab&atb=v101-1&ia=we...
| jampa wrote:
| In this scenario all the "o" instances are "Notepad+".
|
| The error seems to be coming from the right sidebar which
| displays "Notepad+" as a title as well. It seems to be
| getting the "Heading" from the wikipedia page
|
| Here is the object where it extracts the heading from, it
| seems in this scenario it is not extracting "Notepad++" in
| the about but "Notepad+" which is another application.
|
| ```
|
| Abstract: "Notepad+ is a freeware text editor for Windows
| operating systems and is intended as a replacement for the
| Notepad editor installed by default on Windows. It has more
| formatting features but, like Notepad, works only with plain
| text. It can open text files of any size, and a single
| instance of the program can have multiple files open
| simultaneously. It supports dragging and dropping text within
| a file and between files, and supports multiple fonts and
| colours. Notepad+ is available from the company RogSoft. It
| was developed by Dutch programmer Rogier Meurs. It was first
| released in 1996. Originally, it had the advantage of being
| able to open files of any size, because until 2000 Notepad
| could not open files larger than 64 KB." AbstractSource:
| "Wikipedia" AbstractURL:
| "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notepad%2B" Heading:
| "Notepad+"
|
| ```
| cypherpunks01 wrote:
| It's because a single plus '+' is valid in a regex. A double
| plus '++' is invalid.
| Groxx wrote:
| "cpp" seems to work fine though, and returns many results that
| include "c++"... https://duckduckgo.com/?q=cpp&t=ffab&ia=web
| [deleted]
| SirMaster wrote:
| But "c plus plus" breaks
| chrismorgan wrote:
| Corroborating this to some extent, the "HTML" and "lite"
| versions works fine in both cases:
|
| https://html.duckduckgo.com/html/?q=notepad
|
| https://html.duckduckgo.com/html/?q=c%2B%2B
|
| https://lite.duckduckgo.com/lite/?q=notepad
|
| https://lite.duckduckgo.com/lite/?q=c%2B%2B
| cypherpunks01 wrote:
| It's not quite _anything_ that returns a '++', but I think any
| search term that creates a '++' (or perhaps any invalid regex
| syntax) inside the main info box result.
| vikingerik wrote:
| Speaking of control characters breaking things, HN ate the *
| characters in your post and turned the text into italics
| instead.
| kiicia wrote:
| its because of markdown formatting
| buddydvd wrote:
| The part of regex [\w\.-_]
|
| should really be [\w\.\-_]
|
| instead.
|
| But not that's not what caused the problem mentioned in this
| post.
|
| (edited for clairifcation)
| jepler wrote:
| so does "cplusplus"
|
| It seems to have to do with some kind of metadata is fetched and
| then used as a regular expression (to change markup in some other
| part of the page?); it's assumed that the text can be used as a
| regular expression without quotation but in the case of the
| doubled "+" character it becomes a non-valid RE.
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(page generated 2023-09-05 23:02 UTC)