Recursively grep through directory trees.

I am always looking at other people's code to find examples of what I want to do. Where I work we have directories full of code, and I found it a hassle to wade through each directory to grep through the files.

This should also be possible with a combination of xargs and grep, but I liked this solution better, with line numbers and path location included. Also allows users to specify a filename pattern, example searching pl or php or html files.

Comments would be very appreciated.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
# By Greg Flanders gflan@NO.avalon.SPAM.net.THANKS
# 
# Opens each file from currenct directory and searches
# for the pattern given. Jumps down directories to search
# recursively.

use strict;
use File::Find;
use Cwd;

my $directory = getcwd();
my$searchstring = $ARGV[0];
my $ext = $ARGV[1];

print "$searchstring\n";
die "Usage : ggrep searchstring extension\n" if ($searchstring eq "");

find (\&process_file, "$directory");

sub process_file {

    return if -d;

    if ($_ =~ /$ext/i) {

        open (INPUT, "< $_");
        foreach (<INPUT>) {
            if(/$searchstring/i) {
                $_ = substr($_, 0, 60);
                s/^\s*//;
                print "$File::Find::name\:$.\:\t$_\n";
            }
        }
        close INPUT;
    }
}
[download]

Comment on Recursively grep through directory trees. Download Code

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RE: Recursively grep through directory trees. by davorg (Chancellor) on Jul 12, 2000 at 14:05 UTC
Nice code. I do have a couple of suggestions tho'. Instead of `if (-d) {}` why not just use `return if -d;` You use the variable `$count` to keep track of the current line number, but Perl already does that for you in the `$.` variable Hope these are helpful. -- <http://www.dave.org.uk> European Perl Conference - Sept 22/24 2000, ICA, London <http://www.yapc.org/Europe/>	[reply]
RE: RE: Recursively grep through directory trees. by Melvin (Beadle) on Jul 12, 2000 at 17:33 UTC
Thanks for the tips! I've modified the above snippet, including your suggestions, as well as added a few regex's to strip out initial whitespace, as well as added the ability to specify a file extension (actually, a file pattern match). For example, I just used "grep checkbox php" to grep all php files for a checkbox.	[reply]
RE: Recursively grep through directory trees. by merlyn (Sage) on Jul 12, 2000 at 19:16 UTC
I think you introduced unneeded complexity here. Off the top of my head: `use File::Find; my ($search, $ext) = @ARGV; $ext = ".$ext" if defined $ext; @ARGV = (); find sub { push @ARGV, $_ if -f and not $ext or /\Q$ext$/ }, "."; while (<>) { close ARGV if eof; print "$ARGV: $. :$_\n" if /$search/; }` [download] There's a few optimizations with `qr//` if you're really into speed, but this should handle 90% of it. -- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker	[reply] [d/l] [select]
RE: Recursively grep through directory trees. by ZZamboni (Curate) on Jul 12, 2000 at 23:20 UTC
Pretty good snippet. One thing: you should use while instead of foreach. From the Camel book: In a foreach statement, the expression in parenthesis is evaluated to produce a list. So when you use `foreach(<FILE>)` you are slurping the entire file in memory before looping through the files. while on the other hand, would read the file one line at a time, which is good for your purposes. --ZZamboni	[reply]
(jjhorner)Recursively grep through directory trees. by jjhorner (Hermit) on Jul 12, 2000 at 17:42 UTC
Well, I made the mistake of voting you ++ before I noticed that you didn't use either 'warnings' or 'strict'. ALWAYS USE THESE PRAGMAS!! Other than that, pretty good code. J. J. Horner Linux, Perl, Apache, Stronghold, Unix jhorner@knoxlug.org http://www.knoxlug.org/	[reply]
An ancolyte "gets" it. by Melvin (Beadle) on Jul 12, 2000 at 18:06 UTC
FWIW: Here is a short discussion that showed me the light. Melvin strict bugs me though. especially for short hacks like that one. jcwren No no no. strict and -w are your friends. They keep you from chasing down stupid bugs (even in short code) written at 2am in the morning... redmist or 5:00am without sleep jcwren And, it ceases to be a 'short hack' when you post it. Now, it'll be around for eternity. So, not only should you appease the gods with use strict and -w, but you should make sure your name is plastered in there. davorg agrees whole-heartedly with jcwren jjhorner Melvin you never know when you may want to bundle all of your short hacks into a library of useful tools. As a matter of fact, I recommend starting that now! Melvin thanks for the suggestions, the code has now been strictified and warnified. =)	[reply]