Simply searching for strings rarely works well as the codebase grows larger. Because besides knowing where all things named X are, you want to actually see where X is used, or where it's called from, or where it is defined.
With search you end up grepping the code twice:
- first grepping for the name
We're literally in a thread where people invent regexes for how to search the same thing (a function) defined in two different ways (as a function or as a const)
- secondly, manually grepping through search results deducing if it's relevant to what you're looking for
It becomes significantly worse if you want to include third-party libs in your search.
There are countless times when I would just Cmd+B/Cmd+Click a symbol in IDEA and continue my exploration down to Java's own libraries. There are next to zero cases when IDEA would fail to recognise a function and find its usages if it was defined as a const, not as a function. Why would I willingly deny myself these tools as so many in this thread do?
With search you end up grepping the code twice:
- first grepping for the name
We're literally in a thread where people invent regexes for how to search the same thing (a function) defined in two different ways (as a function or as a const)
- secondly, manually grepping through search results deducing if it's relevant to what you're looking for
It becomes significantly worse if you want to include third-party libs in your search.
There are countless times when I would just Cmd+B/Cmd+Click a symbol in IDEA and continue my exploration down to Java's own libraries. There are next to zero cases when IDEA would fail to recognise a function and find its usages if it was defined as a const, not as a function. Why would I willingly deny myself these tools as so many in this thread do?