[seqfan] Re: Announcements: faster search, new Sys Admin

[Peter Munn]

On Sun, June 23, 2019 10:19 pm, Russ Cox wrote:

>  Please let me know if you think the new behavior is
> problematic or can be improved.

Hi Russ,

I'll use square brackets to indicate the contents of the search box.

Yes, the problem I see for my searching is that a search for ["33 35 39 41
44"] now becomes prefixed by "seq:", so no longer matches a row of a table
in the examples (e.g. when the DATA section is read by antidiagonals) or a
comment that gives a few terms of a variant of the sequence. This is why I
sometimes used that syntax until a few months ago.

That was when I discovered that a search for [33, 35, 39, 41, 44] no
longer forced "seq:" onto the front of the search, a change which I found
useful. That change appears to have been reversed.

So, I would appreciate a clear way of avoiding having "seq:" placed in
front of a list of numbers.

As for improvements, top of my practical wish list is to be able to seek a
particular number at a particular sequence offset.

Best Regards,

Peter

> On Sun, Jun 23, 2019 at 1:08 PM Neil Sloane <njasloane at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Russ Cox has speeded up the search for when the query only contains
>> numerical data. Now even sequences of 0's and 1's get a lightning-fast
>> answer. Superseeker is also much faster.
>
>
> As part of this, I have been looking at actual searches, and I've noticed
> that there is a steady stream of people searching for space-separated
> number lists like:
>
>     1 2 3 6 11 23 47 106 235
>     "1 2 3 6 11 23 47 106 235"
>
> My guess is that these searches intend to search for that exact sequence
> (this being the Online Encyclopedia of Integer SEQUENCES and all),
> and that despite the hints and warnings about using comma syntax
> instead, many people don't realize what is going on.
>
> As an experiment, I've changed the rules on the server to turn three
> or more space-separated numbers into a sequence search, as if they'd
> been comma-separated. So now these are all the same search:
>
>     1,2,3,6,11,23,47,106,235
>     1 2 3 6 11 23 47 106 235
>     "1 2 3 6 11 23 47 106 235"
>
> To search for those numbers appearing all together in a sequence entry
> but not necessarily in order, they can be quoted individually, as in
> ["1" "2" "3" "6" "11" "23" "47" "106" "235"]. And of course if the order
> is known but not where index gaps are, there are always subsequence
> searches like:
>
>     subseq:2,6,47,106
>     2,3,6,__,235
>
> The hints page https://oeis.org/hints.html is updated with the new
> state of the world.
>
> Please let me know if you think the new behavior is problematic or
> can be improved.
>
> Best,
> Russ
>
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