[HN Gopher] Show HN: All duckduckgo bang operators on one page (...
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Show HN: All duckduckgo bang operators on one page (metasearch
tool)
Author : MichaelMoser123
Score : 157 points
Date : 2020-09-28 16:34 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (mosermichael.github.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (mosermichael.github.io)
| svrb wrote:
| What's the value of this over using !bang to search them directly
| on ddg?
| speek wrote:
| I run https://duckduckgoog.com (written
| https://twitter.com/mcrittenden) for those of you who want a
| default search engine of google but with the magic of !bangs
| gilrain wrote:
| Excellent idea, but I worry that name is a trademark issue if
| you ever want to monetize.
| sakjdlask wrote:
| I did not know there is so many of them. They should advertise it
| much more as I think this feature could be quite attractive to a
| lot of people.
| andrewzah wrote:
| This is really nice! I frequently use
|
| !w - wikipedia
|
| !drs - docs.rs
|
| !http - http status codes
|
| !a - amazon
|
| !yt - youtube
|
| !usps
|
| !fedex
| notRobot wrote:
| Adding a few that I find handy:
|
| !so - stackoverflow.com
|
| !su - superuser.com
|
| !hn - HN :)
|
| !php - PHP manual
|
| !ss64 - ss64.com (CLI reference)
|
| !g - Google
|
| !i - DDG images
|
| !gi - Google images
|
| !imdb - IMDb
|
| !rt - Rotten Tomatoes
| FabHK wrote:
| Maybe useful: for Amazon and Wikipedia at least (probably
| others), you can get country/language specific versions by
| appending the 2-letter ISO code:
|
| !wde - German wikipedia
|
| !wes - Spanish wikipedia
|
| !ade - search on amazon.de
|
| !auk - search on amazon.co.uk
|
| etc.
| ectoplasmaboiii wrote:
| The ones that I find myself using a lot
|
| !gm - google maps
|
| !sr/!sro - type in subreddit (add o for old reddit)
|
| !so - stack overflow (i usually use it with [tag])
| FabHK wrote:
| > !gm - google maps
|
| !m will save you over 33% of typing... :-)
| ectoplasmaboiii wrote:
| Well now I feel like an idiot. Thanks!
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| those bangs are really a nice feature. my most often used bang in
| 2020 unfortunately still remains _!g_ for every time I search
| something that is related to finding solutions for code /
| software engineering (or copy paste a problem line from syslog
| etc). ddg is in almost every case not showing me the most
| relevant result I want.
| test1235 wrote:
| I gave up on DDG after giving it a go for a year or so ... I
| don't know if Google prioritises Stack Overflow or what, but
| that's what I'm after, most of the time, and DDG just doesn't
| give me that.
| chris_f wrote:
| Try Runnaroo.
|
| Stack Overflow search results are directly included on the
| SERP (in addition to organic web results) for programming
| queries. Plus the privacy aspect.
|
| Example for "python string match":
| https://www.runnaroo.com/search?term=python%20string%20match
|
| I'm the creator of Runnaroo.
| zzyzxd wrote:
| The only operator I use is "!", which is DDG's version of "I am
| feeling lucky". And I only use this because Google's silently
| phasing out the functionality[1].
|
| 1. https://support.google.com/websearch/thread/15794018
| glouwbug wrote:
| Goddamn, thats fun! I didn't know this was a thing.
| jchook wrote:
| I filed a support request with StartPage.com to offer the "I'm
| Feeling Lucky" functionality and never got a response. Maybe if
| more people ask...
| amelius wrote:
| DDG should show them at the bottom of their first search result
| page.
|
| That way, starting a new search with a bang operator wouldn't be
| such a hassle, e.g. on mobile, where it takes like 7 screen-taps
| to restart a search with e.g. "!g" appended to it.
|
| I might actually switch to DDG if they had that.
| franczesko wrote:
| You can add "!g" to your dictionary and initiate it with a
| quick swipe (e.g. I use "bang" to add it). Cool thing is, that
| you can add it anywhere in your query - DDG will pick it up
| amelius wrote:
| Cool, but I assume you still need to select the query and
| click it again to place the cursor, and possibly add a space,
| and then finally press enter (?)
| Rompect wrote:
| I use `!4_b` a lot
| [deleted]
| zmix wrote:
| Woah! I. Did. Not. Know!
|
| Seriously, that's a lot!
| henil2911 wrote:
| Woah. I use bang all the time, but never knew there where this
| many bang's available!
| dredmorbius wrote:
| This is interesting, but raises the metaquestion of when compiled
| listings or search are appropriate.
|
| DDG at this writing advertises 13,564 bangs:
| https://duckduckgo.com/bang?q=
|
| This page, as with the Show HN, groups bangs by category
| (Entertainment Multimedia News Online Services Research Shopping
| Tech Translation).
|
| There is a search feature (match on bang _or_ URL) as well, with,
| of course, its own bang: !bang
|
| In my experience, it's possible to, very roughly, define bounds
| to search results and usefulness or approach:
|
| - 0 results is the null set. Obvious but worth noting.
|
| - 1 result is an identity. That is, a search returning precisely
| one entity _identifies_ that entity. (This relationship may not
| be persistent over time).
|
| - To 10 results is a _near universally useful set_. SERPs, news
| sites, and many other interfaces focus on this scale. Ontologies
| typically branch to about 2-30 items. HN 's front page lists 30
| items. The Presidential Daily Brief runs about ten items. This
| apparently taxes the attention of some incumbents.
|
| - To 100 results remains _tractable to the determined user_. This
| means a capacity to identify specific item(s) of interest without
| necessarily resorting to recordkeeping. More detailed news sites
| might include as many articles. A print newspaper typically runs
| 100-250 individual stories per day.
|
| - To 1,000 results is _methodologically tractable_ , though some
| recording and filtering system is all but certainly required.
| These need not be programmatic or algorithmic though often are.
| News wires (AP, AFP, Reuters, UPI) typically run 1,000--5,000
| items/day.
|
| - To 1,000,000 results, jumping a few orders of magnitude,
| typically requires some _technical searching or sorting_
| capacity. Again, not necessarily algorithmic (a large print
| library collection of a million or more volumes _can_ be managed
| through paper based systems, though seldom is now, and requires
| extensive structure of stacks, index, circulation, and
| reshelving).
|
| - To ~1 billion items is all but certainly programmatic.
|
| - Greater thaan a trilliion items enters the realm of
| probabalistic matches, relevance, and AI.
|
| I'm not aware of specific research in this area but would be
| quite interested in references.
|
| The classification would suggest bang search rather than
| comprehensive listing as being of interest to most peoople
| though.
|
| Sources: Seveeral of the values above are discussed here:
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/6c220n/media_a...
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/7qya12/informa...
| grimgrin wrote:
| Heck yeah! Some ideas for ya:
|
| 1) We can ctrl-f to search obv, but add a filter up top that just
| fuzzies anything matching
|
| 2) Let me condense the header of a category, like how comments
| can hide their children in here
|
| 3) Both of the links in an entry go to the same thing, ala:
| `discworld` and `!discworld` can be clicked to do the same thing,
| populate the box up top, which _does_ let you click & press
| return. But it might be cool if one populated, and the other just
| took you to the !bang in ddg. Not in a new tab! The user can
| force it in a new tab if they want
|
| edit: I know #3 basically says "so just take the user to
| duckduckgo.com?q=!discworld which'll take 'em to whatever site
| that resolves to?" yeah pr much that, heh
| MichaelMoser123 wrote:
| thanks for the suggestions! (unfortunately I am not a big
| expert in frontend stuff, i usually copy stuff from stack
| overflow)
| grimgrin wrote:
| shoot an email to jared@smell.flowers and i'll tell ya some
| thoughts in richer detail if it helps or is interesting to
| you :)
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| With 1 and 2, isn't that basically how !bang is set up? You
| need to expand before you can collapse there I guess.
| K2h wrote:
| !02faq = BMW 2002 FAQ
|
| first thing that caught my eye how can we have a such a specific
| car FAQ for vintage BMW and not have a corresponding bang for
|
| https://www.tdiclub.com/ - the bible in diesel VW.
| vzqx wrote:
| Most bangs are user submitted. Feel free to make one yourself:
|
| https://duckduckgo.com/newbang
| severine wrote:
| It would add to discoverability if a reminder of the bang
| appeared besides the search results (could be under a config
| setting), that way one could learn the bangs associated with
| their most used sites easily.
| cpeterso wrote:
| That's a good suggestion, though DDG has a financial incentive
| to keep users going through DDG's search page. OTOH, DDG
| created and supports bang shortcuts so they want people to use
| them. :)
|
| DDG could show a bang suggestion if any of the top search
| results are for sites that have bang shortcuts. Or suggest
| "Didn't find what you're looking for? Try !g" if the number of
| results found is small.
| MichaelMoser123 wrote:
| you get a help text in a tooltip (hover text) with the URL of
| the search engine - when the mouse hovers over the link; I
| think that adding the url directly to the table entry might
| clutter up the page.
| severine wrote:
| Sorry, I was talking about DDG itself, not your site, which
| has great discoverability ;)
| frabert wrote:
| I much prefer Firefox's "keyword" favourites. For example, I have
| a "cpp ..." search that automatically searched cppreference,
| another one "cmake ..." that searches CMake's documentation, and
| so on and so forth
| toyg wrote:
| Yeah those are basically the same (and came first), but you
| have to define and maintain them yourself.
| ufo wrote:
| Is there some way to add a big list of search keywords to
| Firefox without having to type them one by one in the
| settings screen?
|
| I've been trying to figure out how to do this for years now
| with no luck.
| chrismorgan wrote:
| 1. Open the bookmarks view (probably Menu - Library -
| Bookmarks or Ctrl+Shift+B; not sure on macOS).
|
| 2. In the toolbar, within the _Import & Backup_ menu
| button, use _Backup..._ or _Export Bookmarks to HTML..._.
|
| 3. Observe the file format (JSON for one, HTML for the
| other) and replicate its effects for all the items you wish
| to add.
|
| 4. Restore or import your new bookmarks.
|
| I haven't actually done this for over a decade. I suspect
| the backup/restore route might replace all bookmarks and
| the export/import route might just add new bookmarks, but I
| don't know.
|
| What I'd really like is an extension that could _manage_
| all of these (sync with DuckDuckGo's bangs, allow enabling
| and disabling individually, by group, _& c._, renaming
| bangs), but Mozilla have said "We have no plans to allow
| adding search engine dynamically via WebExtensions. We've
| had too many problems with hijacking."
| (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1268401#c37.)
| So anything like this would need to be a program that could
| run locally and either mess with Firefox's databases
| directly (places.sqlite, I think), or provide you with the
| relevant files for you to import manually. I've thought of
| making such a thing, but I've not done it yet. Part of the
| reason is lack of a good data source: for using DuckDuckGo
| bangs, you need a list that includes the destination of
| each bang, which I don't _think_ they provide in any
| principled way, so you'd be left just polling them.
| ufo wrote:
| I hadn't thought about the search highjacking problem but
| it does help explain why Mozilla is intentionally making
| it harder to mess with the search engine settings. It
| does sound like an external program would be the only way
| to do it...
| AlphaWeaver wrote:
| For ages I've wanted DuckDuckGo to add a "!copy" bang, which acts
| like the "!" operator (automatically navigates to the first
| search result) but instead of going to the page, it copies the
| link to my clipboard.
|
| There are plenty of projects I'm familiar with but don't know the
| canonical URL off the top of my head - when I link someone else
| to them I have to look up their homepage. This would make this
| process much faster.
| jchook wrote:
| I built a simple node JS server to use as my default search
| engine. What you describe could be a 2-line change to my code.
|
| My motivation was using Google "I'm Feeling Lucky" without JS.
| The node app detects the "!lucky" bang, downloads the search
| results, finds the first link, and redirects to it.
|
| Let me know if it interests you.
| glouwbug wrote:
| I'm not perfectly understanding of such legalities, so
| correct me if I am wrong, but wouldn't this be infringing on
| scraping territory?
| jchook wrote:
| Scraping may violate of Google's own acceptable use policy,
| but it's not illegal.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Sure, it's only okay for Google to scrape all websites,
| but not you scraping it. Got it.
| ebfe1 wrote:
| Hi jchook, i would love to play with it and might try to port
| it to cloudflare worker for personal use :) I was thinking of
| exact same thing before bed last night when someone at work
| commented on how much revenue from Ad Google loses from "Im
| feeling lucky" feature which bypass all Ads
| yewenjie wrote:
| I just realized I need this for myself and quickly cooked up a
| solution using tridactyl, ddgr, and jq that fits perfectly in
| my workflow. Everything is reduced to just typing `:cp <SEARCH
| QUERY>` without moving to a new tab or losing flow.
|
| The entire function is basically this (requires Tridactyl
| native messenger). command cp js -p
| tri.native.run('cd ~ && ddgr --json -n 1 ' +JS_ARG + '| jq -r
| ".[0].url" | xclip -sel clip')
|
| [1] https://github.com/tridactyl/tridactyl
|
| [2] https://github.com/jarun/ddgr
|
| [3] https://stedolan.github.io/jq/
|
| PS: I used this tool itself to find the links for the three
| projects mentioned above.
| AlphaWeaver wrote:
| Didn't know about Tridactyl, thanks! This is a really cool
| extension!
| freeqaz wrote:
| Is this dangerous if the link is able to inject Bash commands
| as the value of JS_ARG? If so, that's RCE and that's bad.
|
| Is it possible to do this using the HTML5 clipboard functions
| instead?
| djsumdog wrote:
| I wonder how they choose what is worth of a bang and what's not.
| Are any of the bang operators paid placements?
| samhh wrote:
| That's one of my motivations for writing bangin. There are some
| sites I want to use bangs with which are either too niche or
| otherwise fall foul of DuckDuckGo's rules.
|
| https://github.com/samhh/bangin
| MichaelMoser123 wrote:
| The page lists all !bang search operators on one page, i think
| the feature is easier to use when you have all of them in one
| page; The page is kept in sync with all duckduckgo search
| operators by a nightly build process. The build script/motivation
| for the project is here
| https://github.com/MoserMichael/duckduckbang (my previous
| submission got ShowHN in the title instead of Show HN, so
| submitting a second time)
| pkamb wrote:
| So these all just directly search for that term on the (usually
| substandard) internal website search box?
|
| I don't get the appeal. I want the bang to show a good/filtered
| SERP, not load some other site directly. (similar to a `site:x`
| search on Google I guess.)
|
| What I'd really like to use is a search engine that had custom
| ranking of domains. I'd _heavily_ weigh it to only show Stack
| Exchange, Reddit, and forum posts.
|
| Or a `!discussions` bang operator that filtered DDG results into
| that set.
| jtolmar wrote:
| > I don't get the appeal.
|
| Bangs are nice as a quick shortcut to specialized search
| engines like etymology online, google image search, wikipedia,
| or whatever.
|
| You can set up your browser to do this (some keyword changes
| the search), but it's convenient that DDG already has it built
| in, so the only setup needs to be switching your default search
| engine.
|
| I don't know why anyone would ever use DDG's bangs feature if
| it wasn't their default search engine. That's just a weird
| extra step.
| jacksnipe wrote:
| This is niche, but honestly I search for a lot of magic cards.
| I get a lot of use out of `!mtg`
| pkamb wrote:
| That's a good example where I get zero results if I misspell
| the search term:
|
| https://scryfall.com/search?q=black%20lotuss
|
| Whereas I Google or Duck for "mtg black lotuss" I'll almost
| certainly get the correct results. I feel like I'd just get
| frustrated with the much worse text parsing of each site's
| search field.
|
| Although it is interesting that this "Scryfall" site that
| owns "!mtg" isn't on the first SERP for Google or DDG.
| makeworld wrote:
| Personally I use !yt (YouTube), !py3 (Python 3 docs), and !w
| (Wikipedia) very often, and !g (Google) sometimes.
| lozf wrote:
| These, plus !gm and !gi (for Googles Maps, and Images
| respectively) feature often in my use.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Well, the appeal is that you can set your searchbox for DDG,
| and easily search all those others site when you want, no need
| to load search pages or change search providers.
|
| And it's appealing to me, so I do that. Most people won't
| agree, most people don't even mess with search providers, but
| it's doesn't harm them either.
| whelming_wave wrote:
| I use `!rust` all the time when I just want to pull up the rust
| docs quickly, since their search is much more effective when I
| just want to know about the API for a File or something, though
| I don't get much more value out of them than that.
|
| And I've just learned I can use `!posix` to search the open
| group, which I'll probably use whenever I get upset with
| macOS's man pages again.
| scns wrote:
| there is a nice plugin for rust https://rust.extension.sh/
|
| not affiliated
| intotheabyss wrote:
| I use boardreader.com when I'm searching discussion boards.
| Maybe there's a bang for boardreader?
|
| edit: Actually there is !brd
| neetfreek wrote:
| I agree for many many sites, but do sometimes find it useful -
| specifically when you know exactly what you want from a
| particular site, but don't know the URL. Example: !deb for
| debian package information.
| tshaddox wrote:
| I've always been in the "I don't get it" boat with DDG bang
| operators. When I last tried switching it to my default search
| engine, I felt like any time I needed to search DDG for
| "!{bang} {query}" I could have just searched Google for
| "{query}" and gotten the result I was looking for. In many
| cases, Google will give even better results for siteX than
| siteX's own search, because Google is likely to correct for
| things like common spelling errors or word substitutions.
|
| Granted, I haven't given DDG an earnest try in a couple of
| years, so the DDG non-bang search results may have gotten
| better, but the fact that their bangs are still heavily touted
| as a killer feature doesn't give me much faith.
| 0xCMP wrote:
| The most obvious reason why you'd use DDG is for the privacy
| aspects and the bang operators make it super easy to quickly
| use Google for those times you need it which limits the
| amount of information they have.
| ta8964586 wrote:
| I would call my use of bangs getting to a specific page on
| another site rather that searching another site. For
| instance, I get a lot of use out of the wolfram alpha bang,
| !wa, in those uses I'm not searching as much as I'm inputting
| a calculation for wolfram alpha to perform and the bang let's
| me skip a step by typing "!wa {quety/calculation}" into my
| address bar. Similarly, if ddg is your default search engine,
| you can lookup a url on archive.is just by prepending it with
| "!archiveis " in the address bar.
| sakjdlask wrote:
| I have a similar use case with wordreference. I type '!wr
| wordtodefine' to get the definition of a word.
| tshaddox wrote:
| On Google I just search for "define wordtodefine" (which
| isn't must longer and might even be faster to type) or
| even just "wordtodefine" (Google seems to be pretty good
| at knowing whether a single-word search is likely to be
| looking for the definition).
| varbhat wrote:
| How many bangs do you really remember ?
|
| Bangs are cool but i don't think one can remember many bangs.
|
| This site is also very good. But, it's unfortunately not much use
| to me as i would directly search the term with 'site:' during the
| time i would take to search for specific bang.
|
| Also, if i wanted to search specific site, i would add it in
| search engines of my browser.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| For many sites, you can probably just guess the bang without
| much hassle. The easiest example is IMDb, but my success rate
| guessing is pretty high.
|
| Plus, most people tend to spend most of their time on just a
| few sites. Knowing one or two bangs is useful enough.
| ehsankia wrote:
| I don't use this, but looking at that list, I would disagree.
| I just looked up some of the top sites I'd want to use and I
| wouldn't have guessed any of them
|
| Wikipedia -> !w
|
| Youtube -> !you
|
| reddit user -> !reu
|
| subreddit -> !reddits
|
| also !reddit points to new version, I'd want !redditold
|
| Twitter -> !tweet
|
| Steam -> !steme (???)
|
| Twitch -> !ttv
|
| That being said, if you're on DDG, there's pretty good auto
| complete on bangs so you can find it by typing the name and
| looking at the favicons.
| chrisparsons wrote:
| There are multiple aliases. For instance, I use !yt for
| YouTube (just checked and !youtube also works), and !twitch
| for Twitch. I'll agree with the parent in that it's very
| rare that I'm unable to guess the bang that I want.
| joshmanders wrote:
| Yup, throwing my hat into this ring of agreement. I used
| to have tons of special search engines in Chrome to do
| this, often aliased as name or something, and I switched
| to DDG and started using their Bang's just to realize
| that most of my custom search engines were obsolete and
| like 2-3 needed to be retrained in my head.
| ufo wrote:
| In many of these the full name is also a valid bang. For
| example: !wikipedia !youtube !twitter !steam !twitch.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| As others mentioned, many sites have multiple bangs.
| Twitter for example, my guess would be "!tw" and it is
| correct.
|
| Also, if you want to know one of the bangs, "!bang twitter"
| lists all if the ones involving Twitter.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| I do remember some 4 of them. Those are the ones that I use
| reasonable frequently. A page like this is nice because you can
| look in that and see some new operator that would be very
| useful, but you didn't know of it.
|
| I use those operators instead of setting a new search provider
| because switching providers is a mouse action, while adding the
| operator is just some few more key presses.
| MichaelMoser123 wrote:
| author here, i find myself using more specialized search
| engines like github search (the best code search engine right
| now https://docs.github.com/en/free-pro-
| team@latest/github/searc... ); so specialized search engines
| might be the place to go when the big guys fail to find
| something. So it's not always the same as searching with site:
| ...
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(page generated 2020-09-28 23:00 UTC)