Fun in google!!!!

[gunakesh]

Hello friends,

i found a strange characteristics of Google search option that if you put any alpha bates of English upto 128 times it shows results.

like if you will put aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa up to 128 times you will get results?

my question is that why its limited to 128 time ? is there is any reason behind it?

[simonlogan]

Possibly Google limits the length of the search string to 128 characters total? 128 is a nice binary number after all

[gunakesh]

Hello,
Thanks for reply but i want to know the exact reasone why it so?
as i checked that we get some results up to 128 times ...we get approx 40 results but after that if we put 129 characters then it shows no results...
google cant read more then 128 characters ?????

why its showing the results up to 128 times??????

[simonlogan]

Again I don't know for sure but it might well be to assist in indexing - how many words are longer than 128 characters? So by limiting it to something sensible it means that things don't get too out of control.

[advancedmerchant]

It has to do with parsing. When you type in a search query, Google will find the individual keywords, looking for a space or other seperator character. Therefore "Fun with Google" is parsed into the query (in English): ?hl=en&q=fun+with+google.

Your experiment shows emperically, that Google uses a field length of 128 characters. 128 "a"'s have no seperator, but are WITHIN the 128 character limit, so it parses out as a word of 128 a's. A string of 129 characters cannot parse at all, as it exceeds the field length, and has no seperators, so the result of the parsing is null.

How many times did you try before discovering this?

[bj]

LOL! You sat there and counted how many times you typed each character??? I think you need to get out more!

[deepsand]

Originally Posted by gunakesh

Hello friends,

i found a strange characteristics of Google search option that if you put any alpha bates of English upto 128 times it shows results.

like if you will put aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa up to 128 times you will get results?

my question is that why its limited to 128 time ? is there is any reason behind it?

All inputs fields have, regardless of any explicit definition, size limitations, owing to the physical limitations of the hardware. For example, the accumulator register in the CPU chip itself will physically allow no more that a fixed number of bits. Thus, when doing integer math, there is a numeric value above which it cannot accomodate.

It is not unusual, owing to the binary nature of the switches which form the circuitry of the hardware, for such limitations be some multiple of 2, particularly 2 raised to a certain power. In this case, 128 equals 2 to the 7th power.

[jawn_tech]

Originally Posted by advancedmerchant

How many times did you try before discovering this?

Lol... I was wondering the same thing.

Before gunakesh answers, I'm going to quickly guess...

129 times.

[Peter (IMC)]

Maybe it's a different number for the letter b.

What about the letter c?

and d?

e?

f?



I think AdvancedMerchant explained it correctly.

[Peter (IMC)]

Originally Posted by deepsand

All inputs fields have, regardless of any explicit definition, size limitations, owing to the physical limitations of the hardware. For example, the accumulator register in the CPU chip itself will physically allow no more that a fixed number of bits. Thus, when doing integer math, there is a numeric value above which it cannot accomodate.

It is not unusual, owing to the binary nature of the switches which form the circuitry of the hardware, for such limitations be some multiple of 2, particularly 2 raised to a certain power. In this case, 128 equals 2 to the 7th power.

128 bits are 16 characters. Not 128.

The days that software was limited by the hardware are long gone. If you want you can parse strings of 4000 bytes or what ever number you want. (though there probably are limits in software too, but the hardware is not a real factor anymore.)

[inertia]

There has to be a reason why it's 128. 128 is a crucial number in MIDI too? 128 general midi instruments, volumes with 128 sliding points?

God knows! But there must be a reason why 128 is the limit!

[bj]

There has to be a reason why it's 128. 128 is a crucial number in MIDI too? 128 general midi instruments, volumes with 128 sliding points?

God knows! But there must be a reason why 128 is the limit!

The answer is here:

It is not unusual, owing to the binary nature of the switches which form the circuitry of the hardware, for such limitations be some multiple of 2, particularly 2 raised to a certain power. In this case, 128 equals 2 to the 7th power.

Maybe it's because I've been using computers for so long, and numbers seem to stick in my brain, but think about progressions we've heard in computing, especially in processor power, memory chip capacity, hard drive capacity, etc. Numbers like 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, etc etc etc keep popping up all over the place. The software runs the hardware, and though it's hardware the likes of which none of us has seen, that's what Google basically is-- a bunch of software running a bunch of hardware. Midi instruments are hardware being run by software too.

[inertia]

Its one of those things that makes sense but i don't actually know why!

[Peter (IMC)]

Originally Posted by inertia

Its one of those things that makes sense but i don't actually know why!

Computers use the binary system. It's just a counting system. We use the decimal system. That means there are 10 digits. You can use any system you like to create numbers. If you choose 6, then the counting goes: 0,1,2,3,4,5,... 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15,.... 20, 21, 22, etc. in the system with 6 digits 21 means really 2 * 6 + 1 which would be 13 in the decimal system (1 * 10 + 3). so the first digit represents 1, the second represents 6, the third 36, etc. (just like in our decimal system the first digit represents 1, the second 10, the third 100, etc.)

Computers use the binary system which means they use only 2 digits. so the decimal number 13 would be 1101 (1 * 8 + 1 * 4 + 0 * 2 + 1 * 1).

Maybe you knew that already. The reason why computers use the binary system is that memory uses only 2 states: High voltage and low voltage, which represents 1 and 0. It's just this practical hardware reason that the binary system is used.

[powsurfer]

Originally Posted by gunakesh

Thanks for reply but i want to know the exact reasone why it so?

Why?
Is there some purpose to this?

[inertia]

Originally Posted by Peter (IMC)

Computers use the binary system. It's just a counting system. We use the decimal system. That means there are 10 digits. You can use any system you like to create numbers. If you choose 6, then the counting goes: 0,1,2,3,4,5,... 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15,.... 20, 21, 22, etc. in the system with 6 digits 21 means really 2 * 6 + 1 which would be 13 in the decimal system (1 * 10 + 3). so the first digit represents 1, the second represents 6, the third 36, etc. (just like in our decimal system the first digit represents 1, the second 10, the third 100, etc.)

Computers use the binary system which means they use only 2 digits. so the decimal number 13 would be 1101 (1 * 8 + 1 * 4 + 0 * 2 + 1 * 1).

Maybe you knew that already. The reason why computers use the binary system is that memory uses only 2 states: High voltage and low voltage, which represents 1 and 0. It's just this practical hardware reason that the binary system is used.

I didn't know that. Thanks for the explanation. Its a bit beyond me but further reading will solve that! That's what i love about the Internet knowledge at your fingertips!

[deepsand]

Originally Posted by Peter (IMC)

128 bits are 16 characters. Not 128.

1 character does not equal 1 bit. The number of bits/bytes used depends on the encoding method used.

128 characters is still 2 to the 7th power characters.

Originally Posted by Peter (IMC)

The days that software was limited by the hardware are long gone. If you want you can parse strings of 4000 bytes or what ever number you want. (though there probably are limits in software too, but the hardware is not a real factor anymore.)

That's an illusion. The underlying hardware limitations remain, owing to the physical constraints imposed by the logic cells themselves.

That such limitations appear to be absent owes solely to the use of software to simulate an environment with different limitations.

For example, as noted, integer arithmetic calculations are limited by the physical bit size of the registers in the CPU. Calculations with integers greater than that value naturally allowed are effected by way of breaking the larger values into smaller portions, doing a series of intermediate calculations, and then assembling those intermediate results into a final result that exists only on the output display, i.e. that large result is not internally stored as an integer.

[Peter (IMC)]

Originally Posted by deepsand

1 character does not equal 1 bit. The number of bits/bytes used depends on the encoding method used.

128 characters is still 2 to the 7th power characters.



That's an illusion. The underlying hardware limitations remain, owing to the physical constraints imposed by the logic cells themselves.

That such limitations appear to be absent owes solely to the use of software to simulate an environment with different limitations.