Change:
<ins> # Website features These features are about using the website generated by `rustdoc`. ## Custom search engines If you find yourself often referencing online Rust docs you might enjoy using a custom search engine. This allows you to use the navigation bar directly to search a `rustdoc` website. Most browsers support this feature by letting you define a URL template containing `%s` which will be substituted for the search term. As an example, for the standard library you could use this template: ```text https://doc.rust-lang.org/stable/std/?search=%s ``` Note that this will take you to a results page listing all matches. If you want to navigate to the first result right away (which is often the best match) use the following instead: ```text https://doc.rust-lang.org/stable/std/?search=%s&go_to_first=true ``` This URL adds the `go_to_first=true` query parameter which can be appended to any `rustdoc` search URL to automatically go to the first result. </ins>

Discussion:
Hello, we already have an option Directly go to item in search if there is only one result which can be enabled in the settings ! However, when typing an item path we have a lot of results that shows up and so we can rarely get redirected with the previous option. ! I think that it could be useful to have a feature Directly go to item on exact match. This feature would be an option which can be enabled in the settings (so we still let users to choose what they prefer). As the name suggests it would redirected to the item documentation when typing the exact path. For instance, on the previous screenshot when typing it would redirect to the item page. <!-- TRIAGEBOTSTART --<!-- TRIAGEBOTASSIGNSTART --<!-- TRIAGEBOTASSIGNDATASTARTTRIAGEBOTASSIGNDATAEND --<!-- TRIAGEBOTASSIGNEND --<!-- TRIAGEBOTEND --
Rather than adding a new option, I would change the existing option to take you to the page if there's only one match or there's an exact match.
If I'm reading this correctly, redirecting on an exact match when there's more than one result could be problematic if one type's name is the prefix of another (ex. searching for would take you to ).
I don't see why that's true? OsString is not an exact match for OsStr.
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I would like to try it.
This could be problematic for slow typers due to Rustdoc's incremental search feature. I may be misunderstanding how this feature will work, but if I'm not, then the problem is as follows: the user may type out , press 'r', then move to press 'i', but then get redirected to 's docs before they can press the key.
Oh I see - we could increase the delay for sending you to an exact match to something like a couple seconds.
How about going to the first result when hitting the return key?
Sure, that also seems useful, right now enter does nothing immediately after a search. I think we can do both :)
I did not think about that issue but what proposed sounds good to me.
I will add these two features.
Can you tell us more about the workflow you are using? Are you copy-pasting the fully-qualified path () into a search box, or are you typing it out?

If you're typing it out, it seems like it would be much faster to type just the item name (), hit the down arrow, and hit enter. That's five keystrokes, vs fifteen keystrokes for the version you describe (including shift). I agree with that we shouldn't have separate options for "directly go to single result" and "directly go to exact match." The former is already a niche feature, and off-by-default. We should update the existing feature to be something like "directly go to strong match," where a strong match is: single result exact match that is not a prefix of any other exact match By the way, the current behavior, when you enable "directly go to single result", is that the navigation can be triggered if you pause for 500ms while typing. That's pretty surprising - and very unusual among search interfaces, as far as I know. I think as long as we're refining this functionality we should make navigation happen only if you hit enter.
My workflow may not be optimal but I am using rustdoc search engine in my browser. I expected when typing in the url bar ( being my search engine keyword for rustdoc and being the content of the search) to be redirected to the page directly (i.e. not having to load search results and then getting redirected to the item page). However, what happens is that I get redirected to the list of search results. So, I was looking for settings and I found that Directly go to item on exact match option which was rarely triggered.
Ah, that makes sense! I also have a search engine in my browser to search the rust docs (I use the prefix ). And I often use it as a shortcut to get to docs even when I already know where I'm going So I have a similar use case I'd like to solve. For this use case, we know when we're typing the search that we're going to want the "go to first result" behavior, regardless of whether it's an exact match, or a unique match. So we could follow the example of Google's "I'm feeling lucky" searches: we could have a query parameter that indicates "go to first result," and people could put that in their browser searches. For instance, it might look like .

That has the advantage that it can trigger even on a short input like "Vec" - you don't have to type all the characters to make it unambiguous. Another model we could borrow from is macOS Spotlight / Windows Start Menu. In those systems, as you type, the "best match" is highlighted. If you hit enter at any time, that best match will be executed. If we adopted this style in rustdoc, it wouldn't solve the browser toolbar search, but it might make a good replacement for the current "go directly on exact match" setting, because it could be enabled by default. The downside is that this model relies on very fast updates as you type each character. Our current search doesn't have that - it doesn't search until you've paused typing for 500ms. Also it would be cool to try out OpenSearch to enable browser autodiscovery of the search functionality: https://martin-
Strongly agree with this; in general we should probably be probing how users use the tool more and make design decisions based on that kind of thing. I like the plan
I also think the design is unusual, and if I were to expand on this feature I think it could lead to a bad experience, because maybe someone just wants to see similar results, but then they'll be forced to jump.
I think this is a good solution.
I found some more authoritative information on how Chrome discovers search engines automatically. OpenSearch is part of the story, but not all: Unfortunately, Rust's documentation on misses out on all of these. There's no search functionality on the homepage; users don't usually type out the full hostname because it's long; and searching doesn't generate a GET, because it's all done in JavaScript (and because we do search-as-you-type, so there's no moment at which the user has to actually "submit" the form). The heuristics above actually do pick up on ' search functionality quite quickly, if you do a search from the homepage.
The basic way to implement this would be to check for the param directly here and find the first matching result.
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