7
\$\begingroup\$

There is so much gold on this site, but it's not so easy to find.

For example, I'm golfing in J and like to see expert answers to old questions. Currently, I have to open a question, and search for the text "J," using my browser's find feature. And do this multiple times for popular questions with multipage answers.

And even better would be to search by language and specific user.

  1. Is there a way to do this currently?
  2. Has anyone written a third party site that uses the SO API to do this?
  3. If not, would there be interest in this?
\$\endgroup\$
10
  • 1
    \$\begingroup\$ I search for Brain-Flak all the time using the search bar and that works fine. I just use brain-flak is:q, you can add other tags if you wish. Perhaps this is more of an issue with J in particular. \$\endgroup\$
    – Wheat Wizard Mod
    Commented Sep 19, 2017 at 2:25
  • \$\begingroup\$ Well you can always use the PPCG design userscript, which has automatic leaderboard \$\endgroup\$
    – ASCII-only
    Commented Sep 19, 2017 at 2:28
  • \$\begingroup\$ Also, I'm fine with a third party site, although to me it seems slightly hacky to have to crawl and parse the answers, especially with incorrectly formatted answers \$\endgroup\$
    – ASCII-only
    Commented Sep 19, 2017 at 2:29
  • \$\begingroup\$ @FunkyComputerMan I tried that, but it's not returning the kind of results I want. I literally want a list of people's answers to questions that typically begin "J, 23 bytes" -- from any question that has a J answer. Ideally, you'd be able to view the question side by side with it. \$\endgroup\$
    – Jonah
    Commented Sep 19, 2017 at 2:30
  • \$\begingroup\$ @ASCII-only, I'll check out the script. I agree it's a bit hacky, but I don't see this feature being added realistically anytime soon, and this is kind of thing is what an API is for, after all. \$\endgroup\$
    – Jonah
    Commented Sep 19, 2017 at 2:31
  • \$\begingroup\$ I'm not claiming that works for J, I am just claiming that it does in fact work for most languages. J is likely a exception to the rule since its name is so short. \$\endgroup\$
    – Wheat Wizard Mod
    Commented Sep 19, 2017 at 2:31
  • \$\begingroup\$ @FunkyComputerMan well it isn't exactly going to work nearly as well for a language with a one-letter name :P \$\endgroup\$
    – ASCII-only
    Commented Sep 19, 2017 at 2:32
  • \$\begingroup\$ @Challenger5 yeah, that's about what I was looking for. Not perfect, but good enough. You can also restrict by specific users, which is nice. \$\endgroup\$
    – Jonah
    Commented Sep 19, 2017 at 3:08
  • \$\begingroup\$ Not at all, please do. \$\endgroup\$
    – Jonah
    Commented Sep 19, 2017 at 3:11
  • \$\begingroup\$ I am marking this as status-declined not because it's a bad proposal - I would love this - but it doesn't seem too possible due to dependence on specific formatting, and solutions in the answers cover how you can do this but SE didn't implement it (and probably won't). \$\endgroup\$
    – hyperneutrino Mod
    Commented Jun 9, 2021 at 5:37

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
8
\$\begingroup\$

Searching for [code-golf] is:answer "J" seems to provide good results. And if you want explanations, [code-golf] is:answer "J" "explanation" works.

You can also use user: to filter to a specific user by their ID.

\$\endgroup\$
0
2
\$\begingroup\$

Why this is difficult

As this shows, answers have no metadata at the moment, searching for J for example will also give answers containing a letter J

How you can find answers for a given language

You can use [SEDE], but the data is only updated once a week, and you will only be able to find answers with some form of header.

\$\endgroup\$

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .