[Haskell-cafe] Function names in Haskell lib not first-class on web!

[damodar kulkarni]

Hi Cafe,
It seems, the function names in Haskell libs are not first-class objects,
AT LEAST when it comes to searching for them of the net!
I was trying to search for the following Haskell functions in the mailing
list archives. Here is a summary of the responses I have had from various
servers upon searching various "valid and normally used" Haskell function
identifiers from well-known libraries.

Responses from the http://www.mail-archive.com
 >>=<http://www.mail-archive.com/search?l=haskell-cafe%40haskell.org&q=%3E%3E%3D>,
It seems the script searched for the string "&*gt*; &*gt*;"
* -> *<http://www.mail-archive.com/search?l=haskell-cafe%40haskell.org&q=*+-%3E+*>There
are 0 results.
and so on...

Responses from the http://search.gmane.org
>>=<http://search.gmane.org/search.php?group=gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe&query=%3E%3E%3D>
Here, too, it seems the script searched for the string "&*gt*; &*gt*;"
* -> *<http://search.gmane.org/?query=*+-%3E+*&author=&group=gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe&sort=relevance&DEFAULTOP=and&xFILTERS=Gcomp.lang.haskell.cafe---A>
Here it seems the script searched for the string "&*gt*;"
and so on...

*Note: google badly fails to search these functions identifiers.*

My current solution to this problem is: download compressed text archives
and do a simple grep on it on my machine.

But the archives up to year 2000 only are found at
http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell-cafe/.
So, as an aside: Where do I find the earlier messages for downloading?

Thanks,
Damodar
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