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20:34
@EldritchConundrum I’ve sometimes seen people use the word “groveling” to describe this sort of process, though now that I think about it, I have no idea why…
It seems to be common in the Scheme community in the form “groveling through the syntax tree” or similar. Kind of weird usage!
21:18
Groveling... Oh, if it's through the syntax tree, at least it's already a bit structured. Groveling on the grass at least, or maybe even through the thickets...
1
Q: Origin of usage of “grovel” to mean rummage or exhaustively search

Alexis KingIn computing circles, it is common to use the verb grovel to essentially mean to rummage or to exhaustively search. This usage is listed in The Jargon File, though no explanation as to its origin is provided: To examine minutely or in complete detail. “The compiler grovels over the entire sourc...

I’ve asked about this usage on English SE because it turned out to be a lot more common than I thought!
nice!
ive never seen this phrasing myself, would be interesting to see the origins
Hmm, the dictionaries mention two meanings: the "low status" one and the "low physical position" one. Maybe it's entirely the latter: having the face near enough the ground that one can examine every square centimeter exhaustively.
Maybe the humbleness kinda evokes the willingness to spend a lot of time reading everything...
I also see the meaning: to take pleasure in mean or base things.
Maybe sometimes people enjoy going through every single matching line of code, when learning an unknown codebase
21:37
never heard that definition
21:51
tbh, if it's in the jargon file, that might be the main reason why it's used today
getting a more accurate origin will be difficult, as the authors are getting old
string.grovel(haystack, needle)
now that's a name that suggests naive O(n*m) behavior
The implementation is O(∞) at worst. Just repeat { if(haystack.sub(ind=random(haystack.length),needle.length) == needle) return ind }
Haystacks which do not contain needle are not recommended

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