ffind v1.4.1 - A sane replacement for command line file search

Info: An utility to search files recursively on a dir.

Author: Jaime Buelta

About

It allows quick and easy recursive search for files in the Unix command line.

Basically, replaces find . -name '*FILE_PATTERN*' with ffind.py FILE_PATTERN (and a few more niceties)

• Input filename may be a full regex
• Search recursively on current directory by default.
• If the FILE_PATTERN is all in lowercase, the search will be case insensitive, unless a flag is set.
• Regex can affect only the filename (default) or the full path.
• Will print colorized output in glamorous red (default), except on redirected output.
• Ignores hidden directories and files (starting with .) by default
• Can ignore source control common directories and files, like .gitignore or RCS/. Typically not needed as hidden are ignored by default.
• Follow symlinks by default, but that can be deactivated if necessary to avoid recursion problems
• Can delete matched files
• Can execute a command on matched files
• Experimental fuzzy search

Common uses:

• ffind txt to return all text files in current dir
• ffind ../other_dir txt to return all text files under dir ../otherdir (or `ffind.py txt -d ../otherdir`)

Install

Requires pip, the tool for installing Python packages.

pip install ffind

All options

usage: ffind.py [-h] [-p] [--nocolor] [--nosymlinks] [--hidden] [-c]  [-i]
            [--delete | --exec "command" | --module "module_name args" | --command "program"]
            [--ignore-vcs] [-f] [--version]
            [dir] filepattern

Search file name in directory tree

positional arguments:
  dir                   Directory to search
  filepattern

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -p                    Match whole path, not only name of files. Set env
                        variable FFIND_SEARCH_PATH to set this automatically
  --nocolor             Do not display color. Set env variable FFIND_NO_COLOR
                        to set this automatically
  --nosymlinks          Do not follow symlinks (following symlinks can lead to
                        infinite recursion) Set env variable FFIND_NO_SYMLINK
                        to set this automatically
  --hidden              Do not ignore hidden directories and files. Set env
                        variable FFIND_SEARCH_HIDDEN to set this automatically
  -c                    Force case sensitive. By default, all lowercase
                        patterns are case insensitive. Set env variable
                        FFIND_CASE_SENSITIVE to set this automatically
  -i                    Force case insensitive. This allows case insensitive
                        for patterns with uppercase. If both -i and -c are
                        set, the search will be case sensitive.Set env
                        variable FFIND_CASE_INSENSITIVE to set this
                        automatically
  --delete              Delete files found
  --exec "command"      Execute the given command with the file found as
                        argument. The string '{}' will be replaced with the
                        current file name being processed. If this option is
                        used, ffind will return a status code of 0 if all the
                        executions return 0, and 1 otherwise
  --module "module_name args"
                        Execute the given module with the file found as
                        argument. The string '{}' will be replaced with the
                        current file name being processed. If this option is
                        used, ffind will return a status code of 0 if all the
                        executions return 0, and 1 otherwise. Only SystemExit
                        is caught
  --command "program"   Execute the given python program with the file found
                        placed in local variable 'filename'. If this option is
                        used, ffind will return a status code of 1 if any
                        exceptions occur, and 0 otherwise. SystemExit is not
                        caught
  --ignore-vcs          Ignore version control system files and directories.
                        Set env variable FFIND_IGNORE_VCS to set this
                        automatically
  -f                    Experimental fuzzy search. Increases the matches, use
                        with care. Combining it with regex may give crazy
                        results
  --return-results      For testing purposes only. Please ignore
  --version             show program's version number and exit

Environment variables

Setting these environment variables, you'll set options by default. For example:

export FFIND_CASE_SENSITIVE=1
# equivalent to ffind -c something
ffind something 
FFIND_CASE_SENSITIVE=1 ffind something

• FFIND_SORT: Return the results sorted. This is slower, and is mainly thought to ensure consistency on the tests, as some filesystems may order files differently
• FFINDCASESENSITIVE: Search is case sensitive. Equivalent to -c flag
• FFINDCASEINSENSITIVE: Search is case insensitive. Equivalent to -i flag.
• FFINDSEARCHHIDDEN: Search in hidden directories and files. Equivalent to --hidden flag.
• FFINDSEARCHPATH: Search in the whole path. Equivalent to -p flag.
• FFINDIGNOREVCS: Ignore paths in version control. Equivalent to --ignore-vcs
• FFINDNOSYMLINK: Do not follow symlinks. Equivalent to --nosymlinks flag.
• FFINDNOCOLOR: Do not show colors. Equivalent to --nocolor flag.
• FFINDFUZZYSEARCH: Enable fuzzy search. Equivalent to -f flag.

If an environment variable is present, when calling ffind -h, the option will display [SET] at the end.

Manual Install

From the source code directory python setup.py install

Test

It requires to install cram (it can be installed with pip install cram)

To run all the tests, run make test. This runs the tests on both Python 2 and Python 3. Running just make runs the test for Python 3.

The tests are under the tests directory, more tests are welcome.