findjar - a tool for searching through files, including files inside jars
findjar searches for files/content in any disk structure. It is capable of looking both for/in normal files and also for/in files inside zip/jar files. It is capable of regex matching both for file name/path and for content within the files.
This tool is in essence an improvement of the unix find command geared towards solving a common problem for programmers on the JVM: finding that specific file or class in your maven repo, classpath, etc when that file can reside either directly on disk or inside a jar archive.
Also this tool can be useful in detecting what version a specific class file or source file inside a library jar changed between a number of versions of the library file.
Note that this tool is capable of a few extra tricks such as colorizing matches, printing line numbers, printing a configurable number of surrounding context lines, printing out the contents of matched files inside jar files and calculating md5 or sha1 hashes of the content of matched files inside jar files.
- searches both normal files (like *nix find) and files inside .jar and .zip archives.
- supports regex matching for file names, paths, and content within the files.
- support printing contents of matched files, both normal files and files within jar/zip archives.
- calculates md5, sha1, sha512, crc32, and sha256 hashes for matched files.
- intra line coloring of matches
- support for dumping the matched data to a file for post processing
- ANSI coloring for better visualization, with an option to toggle off
- built to be open - all side effecting things are in a special namespace and extensibility is supported with protocols
To list some examples of how to use findjar:
findjar --examplesor to see a browser compatible list, please refer to the examples page (without coloring at the moment - this might change in the near future).
This project uses:
- java - tested against java 11, 17, and 21.
- clojure - clojure installation instructions can be found here
Under the covers the project uses clojure tools deps and clojure tools build to create an uber jar - but if you just want to build the tool, you don't need to worry about this, just run the build command as per below.
Assuming the above requirements of java and clojure are met, you can build the project using:
─➤ clj -T:build uberwhich will generate an uber/fat jar in the target directory after which you can run the tool as described in the section below.
Once you have the jar file available you can execute the tool using something like the below:
─➤ java -jar target/findjar-1.0.78-standalone.jar ~/.m2/repository/ -n math.clj -g Hickey -x 10
If you are on osx or *nix and you want to make life easier you can create an alias:
─➤ alias findjar="$JAVA_HOME/bin/java -jar ~/findjar/target/findjar-1.0.98-standalone.jar $@"
(replacing ~/findjar with wherever your findjar jar file is and replacing JAVA_HOME with a valid java installation path if you don't have JAVA_HOME set).
After this you can run the tool as you would a normal command:
─➤ findjar ~/.m2
─➤ findjar <search-root> [options]─➤ findjar --help
findjar - a tool for searching through files, including files inside jars
usage: findjar <search-root> [-p <path-pattern>] [-g <content-pattern>] [...]
findjar searches for files/content in any disk structure. It is capable of
looking both for/in normal files and also for/in files inside zip/jar files.
It is capable of regex matching both for file name/path and for content
within the files.
This tool is in essence an improvement of the unix find command geared
towards solving a common problem for programmers on the JVM: finding that
specific file or class in your maven repo, classpath, etc when that file can
reside either directly on disk or inside a jar archive.
Also this tool can be useful in detecting what version a specific class file
or source file inside a library jar changed between a number of versions of
the library file.
Note that this tool is capable of a few extra tricks such as writing out the
contents of matched files inside jar files and calculating md5 or sha1 hashes
of matched files inside jar files.
For regular files the path pattern (-p) matches against the entire path,
including the file name, i.e.:
~> findjar ~/.m2 -p '.*asm/asm/3.2.*pom'
repository/asm/asm/3.2/asm-3.2.pom
whereas for files within jar files, the path pattern matches the string:
<path-to-jar-file>@<path-within-jar-file>
i.e:
~> findjar ~/.m2 -p '.*asm/asm.*Edge.class'
repository/asm/asm/3.2/asm-3.2.jar@org/objectweb/asm/Edge.class
Command line switches can be provided either using short form i.e. '-t j' or
long form i.e. '--type j'.
For usage examples:
~> findjar --examples
Author: Matias Bjarland / mbjarland@gmail.com
findjar 1.0.98 - fa4efc9 - 2023.09.21 16:11:18 +
Options:
-p, --path <regex> a pattern to match against the relative path
(including file name) starting from search-root
-a, --apath <regex> a pattern to match against the absolute path
(including file name)
-n, --name <regex> a pattern to match against file names
-g, --grep <regex> a pattern to match against file content lines
-t, --types <n|j|z> restrict the files searched to only the type(s)
specified. The list of supported file types is
extensible. Available file types: n - normal files,
j - files in jar files, z - files in zip files.
Default: nj
-x, --context <#> If -g is given, show <# of lines> lines of context
around the match, defaults to 0
-o, --out-file <path> when using -c (cat file), write the contents of the
located file(s) to the output file
-f, --flags <flags> turns on regex flags for all matches used. Example:
'-f i' turns on case insensitive matching for both
file names and content. See oracle javadocs on
java.util.regex.Pattern (special constructs > match
flags) for details on java regex flags
-c, --cat cat file. For matching files, print the entire file
contents on the console
-m, --monochrome turn off ansi-coloring of matching content lines
-s, --hash <algo> calculate file hash(es) for matched files. Available
algorithms: md5, sha1, sha512, crc32, sha256
--profile internal developer option - enable profiling
--examples print out usage examples
-h, --help show usage information
The project is released under the Eclipse Public License - v2.0
Matias Bjarland / mbjarland@gmail.com