Search Open C Tips

Search Open C Reference Guide Tips

JavaScript must be enabled to use the search tool. If you have JavaScript disabled in your browser, an error message will display at the top of the Search page.
All of the searches are case insensitive, and are done via regular expressions.
If you search for two words separated by a space, we will look for anything that contains both the first word and the second word regardless of the order. (see example below)
Quotation marks ( " ) do special things when searching the Open C Reference Guide (see example below). When searching for two consecutive words, using quotes around those words will search for the words separated by either spaces or underscores.
Search results may include partial words. For example if you search for ASSEM you will get results that include ASSEM, ASSEMBLY, and ASSEMBLIES. (see example below)
You can specialize the search to include or exclude files, functions, structures, enumerations, unions or #defines by checking their corresponding boxes. You can also search over all of the chapters in the documentation, or just one at a time by selecting the different chapters from the pull down menu.

The last option is for an "Expanded Search". The following table explains the difference in the final results for each type of item with and without the expanded search

Search Type	Search Names Only Results	Expanded Search (with Comments) Results
Files	Searches file names only	Searches file names, and file comments
Functions	Searches function names only	Searches function names, function comments, argument names, and argument comments
Structures	Searches structure names only	Searches structure names, alternate structure names (shown in 'also known as' section of the docs), structure comments, element names, and element comments.
Enumerations	Searches enumeration names only	Searches enumeration names, alternate enumeration names (shown in 'also known as' section of the docs), enumeration comments, element names, and element comments.
Unions	Searches union names only	Searches union names, alternate union names (shown in 'also known as' section of the docs), union comments, element names, and element comments.
#Defines	Searches #define names only	Searches #define names and may include #define comments. (The comments for #defines are not always located where we can find and parse them from the header file, so do not assume that we will search EVERY #define's associated comments).

Maximizing Search Results

The following are sample search strings with possible output to display tricks for broadening or narrowing searches.

If you search for
The results will include anything that contains STRING1.
These are some possible results:

STRING1
something STRING1 more text
somethingSTRING1more text
something_STRING1_more_text
somethingSTRING1more_text

If you search for
The results will include anything that contains both STRING1 and STRING2 regardless of the order.
These are some possible results:

STRING1 STRING2
STRING2 STRING1
STRING1 some other text STRING2
STRING2 some other text STRING1
STRING1_STRING2
STRING2_STRING1
something_STRING1_something_else_STRING2_more_text
something_STRING2_something_else_STRING1_more_text

If you search for
The \s character is used to represent a space in the regular expression. The results will include STRING1 immediately followed by a space immediately followed by STRING2.
These are some possible results:

STRING1 STRING2
something STRING1 STRING2 more text
somethingSTRING1 STRING2more text

If you search for
The results will include STRING1 immediately followed by an underscore immediately followed by STRING2.
These are some possible results:

STRING1_STRING2
something_STRING1_STRING2_more_text
somethingSTRING1_STRING2more_text

If you search for or
The results will include STRING1 immediately followed by a space or underscore immediately followed by STRING2.
These are some possible results:

STRING1 STRING2
something STRING1 STRING2 more text
somethingSTRING1 STRING2more text
STRING1_STRING2
something_STRING1_STRING2_more_text
somethingSTRING1_STRING2more_text

If you search for
The \s character represents a space in the regular expression. Using quotes means that we will look for spaces or underscores in place of each \s character. The results will include anything that contains the whole word STRING1 with spaces or underscores on both sides.
These are some possible results:

something STRING1 more text
something_STRING1_more_text

NOTE the following search strings will yield different results:
and
The leading and trailing spaces in " STRING1 " are removed by default. To keep the leading and trailing spaces you must specify them manually with the special \s character as shown in "\sSTRING1\s".

If you search for
The ^ character is used to represent the start of the string in a regular expression. The results will include anything that starts with STRING1. Note if you use the ^ option with an expanded search, it will only find items whose names start with STRING1.
These are some possible results:

STRING1 something
STRING1something
STRING1_something

If you search for
The $ character is used to represent the end of the string in a regular expression. The results will include anything that ends with STRING1. NOTE do not use the $ option with an expanded search. We append all of the possible information about each item (the item name, comments, etc.) into one searchable string for the expanded search. Therefore you would only find things whose very last comment ended with STRING1 - which is most likely not what you want.
These are some possible results:

something STRING1
somethingSTRING1
something_STRING1