How is Google for --depend?

Question

The last makefiles we received from a third-party vendor have rules with --depend at the end of the build rules, so I thought I would search it on Google, but I try as best I can, I can’t convince it displays any pages with exactly the same characters --depend

I tried surrounding it with quotes "--depend": I tried Advanced Search: I tried the backslash "\ - \ - depend" in (in vain) hope there is some kind of unpublished search for regular expressions.

Am I missing something dazzlingly obvious?

Please note that this is NOT a question of what -depend does, I know this is a question of how you google for very accurate, programmer-oriented text.

Answer 1

You can specify alphabetic characters in Google Code Search, but not in Google Web Search.

Examples

Google Code Search for + - Depends

Google Web Search for + "- depend"

Answer 2

I remember reading somewhere that Google web search does not index non-alphanumeric characters, treating them as word delimiters, so this is not possible.

Answer 3

, " ". , .

Answer 4

, , .

Here's how you can filter out really popular results that really have nothing to do with you.

For example, try to find "wow". Then try to find "wow -warcraft".