The Art of Googling (opens in new tab)

I'm disappointed by the deprecation and decay of features of DDG and Goog in recent years, it seems like the trend is toward dumbing-down.

It used to be that double-quoted strings meant "search for exactly this, not fuzzy searches". Now, DDG requires a plus sign in front of a double-quoted string. +"KS-19319ZJFT"

Also, way, way back, you could conduct elaborate boolean searches like (space equals implicit "and", so it's omitted):

    site:foo.com -site:docs.foo.com ((lemons "crab apples") or ((oranges beans) (cherries plums)))

Ideally, I'd like a syntax that looks like this:

    search = "( search ")"
           | "-" search
           | search ("and")? search
           | search "or" search
           | constraint
           | term

    term = quoted_term
         | simple_term

    quoted_term = '"'([^"\\]|'\\"')+'"'
                | "'"([^'\\]|"\\'")+"'"

    simple_term = [^'" ]+

    constraint = file_type_constraint
               | url_constraint
               | site_constraint
               | temporal_constraint

    file_type_constraint = "filetype:" (common_type|"*"?"."?[a-z0-9]+)
                         | "mimetype:" regex

    common_type = "video"|"photo"|"audio"|"email"|"web"|"document"|"text"

    url_constraint = "inurl:" regex
 
    site_constraint = "site:" regex

    time_constraint = "before:" date 
                    | "after:" date
                    | "within:" time

    /* "and," "or," and : prefixes should be case-insensitive and localizable */
    /* date, time and regex are "exercises for the reader" ;) */