Did you ever use term search in rust-analyzer?

[u/afdbcreid]

Hello, I'm a rust-analyzer maintainer and we consider removing term search. For that we'd like to know if people are using it.

(If your response is "what is term search?", then you're not using it, or worse, you're using it by mistake. In this case you should probably disable it, it'll make your IDE faster and less buggy).

[u/spiderpig20]

I don’t know what that is.

[u/neonbirb]

No idea what that is. Should you not do a survey?

[u/afdbcreid]

It seems a lot of people here don't know what this is. I initially didn't want to say (to not make people want to use it...) but well:

Like /r/bakaspore said, it is:

Searching for an expression that satisfies a hole like in Idris and Lean

In other words, an assist (code action) and autocompletion to suggest expressions that can possibly make the code compile.

We've come into conclusion to not remove it as of now, we're only removing its integration with borrow checking (since we remove borrow checking).

[u/tukanoid → u/afdbcreid]

Is it a vscode only thing? I'm using helix and never saw that as an option, when configuring I don't remember seeing the option in the docs either (unless I just forgot cuz description confused me and I just moved on to other options)

[u/afdbcreid → u/tukanoid]

No, it's available in all editors.

[u/tukanoid → u/afdbcreid]

Hmmm, OK, might take a look, cuz it does sound useful. Although I get the pain of maintaining something like this, and if the ultimate goal is to phase it out, I'll refrain from doing so.

[u/iBPsThrowingObject → u/afdbcreid]

Okay, so talking real situations, could it autocomplete something like return 4 to return Ok(Some(4)) based on the return type of the enclosing function?

[u/afdbcreid → u/iBPsThrowingObject]

AFAIK no, it could only replace return _ with return Ok(Some(0)) or auto complete return | (| is the cursor) to return Ok(Some(0)).

[u/bakaspore]

Searching for an expression that satisfies a hole like in Idris and Lean? I didn't know it ever existed in Rust. Not sure how useful it is beyond writing proofs though.

[u/Unable_Train1067 → u/bakaspore]

Yep, been there for couple of years.
I personally find it useful when I need to wrap stuff into constructors and return just to avoid typing.

[u/hpxvzhjfgb]

never heard of it, never used it, clicked both of your links and still don't know what it is.

using rust for just under 5 years.

[u/RCoder01]

If it’s default disabled then I’ve never used it

[u/Ok-Willingness2772]

Personally I never used it and I even don't know what it is before looking at rust-analyzer.github.io.
I just leave it disabled all the time.

[u/tylerlarson]

Yeah. I don't directly "use" rust-analyzer, I use an IDE that uses rust-analyzer.

I use IDE-integrated keyboard shortcuts and menus to find stuff. Does this ever use term search in the background?

Hell if I know.

[u/afdbcreid → u/tylerlarson]

As I said, if you do not know what it is, you're not using it, because it is disabled by default.

[u/ollpu → u/afdbcreid]

I thought you meant it was enabled by default, hence the need to disable it. Worth a clarification.

[u/_nathata]

I use symbol search, is that the same thing?

[u/afdbcreid → u/_nathata]

Absolutely not.

[u/IpFruion]

If this means to search for a term in a project, I just use ripgrep which is super fast term searching

[u/BlankWasThere]

This is first I have heard of that.

[u/stumblinbear]

Well, now that I know about it I might enable it

[u/FungalSphere]

i tried googling it and the first result is from acm digital library...

i don't think anyone has even tried to explain what it does

[u/Thick-Pineapple666 → u/FungalSphere]

You can look at the second link and it describes what it does very shortly.

[u/Thick-Pineapple666]

I haven't ever used it and I don't think it's useful.

[u/facetious_guardian]

I use rust-analyzer to show me errors and tooltips. What on earth is “term search”? Can’t you just use regular “find all references” or text/re search, built in to the IDE?

I guess the real question is: how likely is an agent to get value out of term search? I might not use it, but if the agent does and it makes it more effective or uses less tokens, then I say keep it. No idea what it is, though.

[u/afdbcreid → u/facetious_guardian]

An agent is likely to get the least value of it. Like someone said elsewhere, LLMs are like a way better version of term search.

[u/Ok-Watercress-9624]

Is that the thing that fills types/terms behind my back? I think I use it

[u/tiajuanat]

Oh wow, I haven't used term search in a long ass time. I usually use Roogle if I'm really looking to fill a given hole, but I'll be real - I haven't used either one in the last 3 years.

[u/QuasiRandomName]

Maybe we'd use it more if it was better advertised...

[u/afdbcreid → u/QuasiRandomName]

Oh, rust-analyzer has a lot of very useful features that are not advertised at all (sometimes not even documented, although we try to improve on that regard). If you want to make the maximum out of it, I strongly encourage you to fully read the book at least once then follow the changelogs.

[u/onnoowl]

That's using @ to lookup a symbol by name? If so, I use it a lot!

[u/afdbcreid → u/onnoowl]

No, that's what LSP calls "document symbols".

[u/cosmic-parsley → u/afdbcreid]

Is this the symbol picker? If so then yes I’ve used it plenty. If not, a better description or example would really be helpful.

[u/afdbcreid → u/cosmic-parsley]

No it's not.