grep helper function and command line flag manager
Version: 1.0.0
Topics: linux, bash, grep, search,
This package has two components (1) a grep wrapper script command that applies flags and settings at runtime (2) a configuration helper for writing settings file and managing config
Grep runtime setting from a file or env variables
Store project specific settings and preconfigured searches in a stanardized file
If you find yourself writing advanced searches using grep very often then this tool may be helpful. It can be especially powerful when combined with the findtool companion utility (*under development).
- Configure searches with environment variables
- Create grep scriptlets for directories for commonly used search and list operations.
- Read options from from a config file in the user home directory
.greprc - Override global options with a
.greprcfile in the current directory - Override any option using session enviornment varibles or appending regular grep commandline flag as usual
Link the files location in bin to your user path (~/bin).
For convenience there is an install script INSTALL.sh that can do this for you.
Each of the options available in man grep are recognized by the tool.
Since the utility primarily works with environment variables the values are written in all uppercase and
prefixed with GREP_
A subset of the values do not make sense when the command is not being run directly (when running in a pipe). They are not set when the input is not a tty.
see etc folder for example files
For detailed explanation of all the option refer to grep manpages man grep.
GREP_AFTER=3
GREP_BEFORE=1
GREP_DEBUG="yes"
GREP_COLOR="yes"
GREP_LINENUM="yes"
GREP_FILENAME="yes"
GREP_GROUPS="no"
GREP_QUIET="yes"GREP_BEFORE - same as -B, --before-context=NUM
GREP_AFTER - same as -A, --after-context=NUM
Controls the amount of context lines shown with results
Note: Any time the after/before context flags are set in grep it adds -- dividers between each group. You can disable them with GREP_GROUPS="no" but it is simpler to comment out the before and after settings if you do not want this behavior.
GREP_QUIET - same as -s, --no-messages
Disables greps default warning messages that are often unhelpful.
GREP_DEBUG - Not a grep flag. This option is only related to this package specificly and prints extra output throughout the program.
GREP_NOCASE="no"
GREP_REGEX_EXT="no"
GREP_BINARY="no"- GREP_NOCASE
-i, --ignore-casecase insensitive mode - GREP_REGEX_EXT
-E, --extended-regexpextended regex mode - GREP_BINARY
-a, --textbinary as text mode
GREP_EXCLUDE_PATTERN="*.min.js,*.min.css"
GREP_EXCLUDE_FILE="$HOME/.grepignore"
GREP_EXCLUDE_DIRS=".git,node_modules"GREP_EXCLUDE_PATTERN - same as --exclude=GLOB
Skip files whose base name matches any of the file-name globs read from FILE
GREP_EXCLUDE_DIRS - same as --exclude-dir=GLOB
Skip any command-line directory with a name suffix that matches the pattern GLOB. When searching recursively, skip any subdirectory whose base name matches GLOB. Ignore any redundant trailing slashes in GLOB.
Bash Parameter Expansion
The helper utility changes the way these flags works sligtly to make it easier to configure for the user. You can set multiple patterns or directories now in a comma seperated list and they will be expanded to separate flags when the command is executed.
By default the .git and node_modules are added in the .greprc files. These folders found very often and typically aren't what you are looking for, but produce tons of results.
GREP_EXCLUDE_FILE - same as --exclude-from=FILE
Skip files whose base name matches any of the file-name globs read from FILE. It works like .gitignore and by default the command reads from your user home directory.
greptool commands
The following greptool commands are used to set environment variables used by the grep helper command and write and .greprc files that can be used by that command.
note: much of functionality for this part is still experimental
help - print this message
list - show all option values
get <option> - get a current variable value
set <option> <value> - set variable to a new value
save <file> - output the current environment to file in th current directory
reset - sets all variables to the initial default
reload - reload the local grep.env file
update - manually update grep flags (Only needed if youve made
chages to the env outside of this script)
clear - remove all related env variables from the current session
debug - print all environment variables and some that might not be related
A typical grep search looking the word key with often used settings
Default Grep
# 1. shortest version in current dir
grep -ir --color key
# 2. short version to directory in user home
grep -ir --color key ~/library
# 3. expanded version to directory in user home
grep --ignore-case --recursive --color=always key /home/username/library
# 4. expanded with commonly used settings
grep --ignore-case --recursive --color=always --exclude-dir=node_modules --exclude=*.min.js --exclude=*.min.css key /home/username/libraryIn the 4th example you can see how the command string can become very long quickly. And these type of settings are usually specific to which directory you are working from and exactly what you want to find. This means that they are hard to write a simple alias for that will work the same from one directory to another and between projects.
Greptool Version
g key .Each of the examples in the first set is about the same using the greptool g command (exception for the directory at the end). Assuming you have your preferences set in some location you can avoid things like color recursive and ignoring problem folders automatically.
The above command expands to this when it runs.
grep --color=always --ignore-case --no-messages --line-number --with-filename --exclude-from=/home/icarus/.grepignore --exclude-dir=.git --exclude-dir=node_modules --exclude=*.min.js --exclude=*.min.css --recursive errorMatt Harris charrismatic@protonmail.com (https://charrismatic.github.io/)
ISCISC