  Ephemeral Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) must be powered by some of the most
energetic processes in the Universe. That makes them highly interesting in
their own right and as precise probes for estimating cosmological parameters.
This field thus poses a unique challenge: FRBs must be detected promptly and
immediately localised and studied based only on that single
millisecond-duration flash. The problem is that the burst occurrence is highly
unpredictable and that their distance strongly suppresses their brightness.
Since the discovery of FRBs in single-dish archival data in 2007, detection
software has evolved tremendously. Pipelines now detect bursts in real-time
within a matter of seconds, operate on interferometers, buffer high-time and
frequency resolution data, and issue real-time alerts to other observatories
for rapid multi-wavelength follow-up. In this paper, we review the components
that comprise a FRB search software pipeline, we discuss the proven techniques
that were adopted from pulsar searches, we highlight newer, more efficient
techniques for detecting FRBs, and we conclude by discussing the proposed novel
future methodologies that may power the search for FRBs in the era of big data
astronomy.
