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Good old archie... http://archie.icm.edu.pl/archie-adv_eng.html

> Search Type: Sub String Exact Regular Expression

Google has an advantage in terms of index size, but definitely lose in terms of precision. The way it munges queries is a bit unsettling at times, and even the "exact" option doesn't seem to always work the way it should.

Have you tried verbatim mode? (Thanks https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12046056)

That is a huge improvement over the normal search, but unfortunately it's not truly verbatim. For example, searching for `self` with the backticks turns up results for just self with no backticks. It works with some symbols but not others, not sure why.

Now this DOES bring on the nostalgia... :-)

I recall there used to be a veronica too (Very Easy Rodent Oriented Network something or the other....), then a jughead too ...

I remember using the UI through telnet archie.mcgill.ca. It showed percent progress. The location used a 32-bit signed int. When the archive exceeded 2GB, the percentage became a negative count to 0% rather than count-up to 100%.

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