Operator / Syntax (Symbols) Search

Affected page

N/A (Search box)

Current issue

Users may come across operators (and other syntax symbols) in code they don't know, and/or don't know what the name for an operator is. This can make them very hard to find documentation for.

Suggested improvement

Add operators (and other non-word syntax) to the search feature.

For best results I think partial matches should work. eg:

• ? would match ternary, ?:, ?? and ??=
• : would match ternary, ?: and (static) class access
• [ would match arrays and list
• '.' would match concatenation, splat and spread

(I may have missed other potential matches from these examples - this is just "off the top of my head")

Additional context

Related issues:

• https://github.com/php/doc-en/issues/3519
• https://github.com/php/doc-en/issues/3515

Recently seen chat query:

[, $target] = explode('://', $uri, 2); I encountered this line in some code, searching online is tricky with this kind of thing, what is this syntax called?

Start at the search box implementation and read related issues 3519 and 3515 to understand the existing search behavior and scope. Define how partial matches for operators and other non-word syntax should work; the work is done when examples such as ?, :, [, and . find their relevant documentation.