Comment by almostgotcaught

I don't know what you're asking for - this isn't some kind of controversial topic - any iterative algo that isn't polynomial time (or is approximate) is search.

In the context of compilers there are many. Look at this block diagram for Chaitin's register allocator:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Register_allocation#Principle_...

That's a search because it tries an allocation, possibly incurs a spill, tries again.