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eclipseandroid-studioide
Gary Holiday
Gary Holiday

Reputation: 3562

What is an IDE doing when it's indexing?

When an IDE says it's indexing what does that mean? What is actually going on "under the hood"? Is it safe for me to build my project during it indexing or should I wait until it's finished indexing?

I'm assuming indexing is a common thing for IDEs but I've never had an explanation of indexing. I simply see the word indexing and think "I know that word, must be doing something." and I just take it for granted and expect it to happen.

What is indexing?

Upvotes: 14

Views: 2692

Answers (2)

Ajay Rawat
Ajay Rawat

Reputation: 178

The indexing provides a quick way to locate certain elements, e.g. files containing a certain word or methods with a particular name, in large codebases. Developers can use the existing indexes built by the IDE itself, as well as build and use their own indexes.

Upvotes: 0

Moshe Katz
Moshe Katz

Reputation: 16873

Different IDEs do different things, but typically it means that the IDE is processing up files so that it can offer Code Completion features (the box that gives you options when you type a partial line of code). Without indexing, the IDE would have to search through your files for the options to display as you are typing, which would be very slow.

Upvotes: 12

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