7 ms·

CGrep: a context-aware grep for source codes

109 points by psibi 12y ago

chris_wot 12y ago
I'm not sure where the documentation is.
- meowface 12y ago
  Yeah, I struggled with that as well. The landing page of any software project like this should at the least have a lot of example syntax with output, plus a glaringly obvious link to full documentation.
- timdorr 12y ago
  It's in the README at the repo: https://github.com/awgn/cgrep https://github.com/awgn/cgrep
  - chris_wot 12y ago
    Any examples?
- thinkpad20 12y ago
  It's following the illustrious Haskell tradition of barely-documented code. (Non-snarky follow-up: Haskell code is often woefully under-documented, for whatever reason. Possibly because people think that the type signatures are sufficient, or possibly because Haskell code lends itself to concision and documentation runs counter to that, or possibly because Haskell projects are often the result of one person's work, diminishing the need to explain oneself. In any case, it's an unfortunate fact of many Haskell apps and libraries.)
gingerlime 12y ago
This looks like a cool idea. I think a couple of (neat!) examples, stuff you can't easily do with normal grep, will go a very long way. The list of features is secondary in my opinion.
- nichochar 12y ago
  Seconded
- hunt 12y ago
  Taking this idea further, you could perhaps also have examples of use for each language.
- stcredzero 12y ago
  You basically had this with the Smalltalk refactoring Browser, where each search popped up displayed in a browser window. Then you could easily AND such searches together by executing a script in the browser window. Slightly more sophisticated combinations were possible with just a few lines of scripting. On top of that, everything above applied to syntax-driven rewrites and refactorings.
yawniek 12y ago
a binary for os x would be nice, since installing cabal/ghc currently is a bit of a pain
- mattgreenrocks 12y ago
  Isn't that just a brew install away?
  - oinksoft 12y ago
    It is a package install away: http://www.haskell.org/platform/mac.html http://www.haskell.org/platform/mac.html On my machine it is significantly slower than `ag` (Silver Searcher) for basic searches, but it should install and run.
    - yawniek 12y ago
      ok thats a way. i usually like to install stuff with homebrew.
wangweij 12y ago
Examples or it didn't happen.
- invernomut0 12y ago
  e.g. $ cgrep -r --header "stdio.h" to search recursively for headers $cgrep -r --identifier VARname to search for a variable etc..
githulhu 12y ago
Darn, no SQL support. I often find myself wishing something like this existed for SQL, so I could, say, find all places where field X in table Y is updated, or referenced in a WHERE clause predicate, etc.
- mh- 12y ago
  interesting request; I've wanted something like this before but never enough to really look for it. I'm surprised there isn't a tool that can do this already.. perhaps under the guise of refactoring?
cheez 12y ago
How do I build this for Windows? I think I have something Haskell related installed because I see lambda as an icon on the .hs files.
jasonlfunk 12y ago
What is the difference between this and ack? http://beyondgrep.com http://beyondgrep.com
- netghost 12y ago
  This is aware of some basic language semantics like literals, identifiers, etc. Or so it seems. Peek at the github page https://github.com/awgn/cgrep https://github.com/awgn/cgrep for a little more info.
bogolisk 12y ago
blah.c: void foo(item *x) { x->blah(1, 2, 3); x->blah (4, 5, 6); blah (7, 5, 1); foo (4, 5, 6); x->blah (4, 5, 6); } void foo2(item y, item *x) { y.blah(1, 2, 3); y.blah (4, 5, 6); blah (7, 5, 1); foo (4, 5, 6); x->blah (4, 5, 6); } search in blah.c for a call to blah() with 5 as 2nd argument from any structure or pointer. cgrep --code --semantic '_1 . OR -> blah ( _2 , 5, _3 )' blah.c output: blah.c:6: x->blah (4, 5, blah.c:7: 6); blah.c:10: x->blah (4, blah.c:11: 5, 6); blah.c:18: y.blah (4, 5, blah.c:19: 6); blah.c:22: x->blah (4, blah.c:23: 5, 6);
res0nat0r 12y ago
Any examples or reasons why I should use this over the_silver_searcher?
WorldWideWayne 12y ago
It really sucks that 15 languages that people use less than C# are supported before anyone thinks of adding support for C#. Why does everyone hate Microsoft's languages and love Apples?
- TallGuyShort 12y ago
  The most reasonable explanation is that this is developed by (an) Apple user(s) and adding support for Apple's languages is simply easier and more valuable than adding languages for a platform they don't use. If it's worth it to you or other C# users, I'm sure they wouldn't mind you submitting a pull request.
  - WorldWideWayne 12y ago
    They actually do support C#, but I missed it because I read the list too quickly.
- djeikyb 12y ago
  I've not tried it, but the linked article claims c# is supported. Quote: Languages support for Awk, C, Cpp, Chapel, Csharp, Css,
  - WorldWideWayne 12y ago
    You know - I totally missed it because of the way it was written. Sorry for complaining! Thanks so much :)
egonschiele 12y ago
I've thought about something like this before, and I'm really excited to see how fully-featured it is. Written in Haskell is also a big plus.
mcrider 12y ago
Would love a UI for this and an editor -- I still use TextWrangler/BBEdit daily to grep large chunks of source code and then edit in place (e.g. for refactoring). Just getting the search results requires opening up each file individually then editing, which is just too slow.
ushi 12y ago
Funny, there was a bell-labs project with same name. It seems to be dead[0], but when we travel the time a few years back, we get a wonderful project homepage[1]. [0] http://www1.bell-labs.com/project/wwexptools/cgrep/ http://www1.bell-labs.com/project/wwexptools/cgrep/ [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20080513225010/http://www1.bell-labs.com/project/wwexptools/cgrep/ https://web.archive.org/web/20080513225010/http://www1.bell-...
edderly 12y ago
I was curious, but had no idea how to use this on Ubuntu sudo apt-get install haskell-platform download and extract the tarball cd awgn-cgrep-8af1beb cabal cgrep.cabal Unfortunately what stops me using it on a large codebase is that I can't exclude directories like .repo (not sure about .git).
volune 12y ago
How does this compare with Ack?
nodivbyzero 12y ago
Have you tried https://github.com/zeux/qgrep https://github.com/zeux/qgrep ??? Fast regular expression grep for source code with incremental index updates
kumarishan 12y ago
can it be integrated with sublime text ?
michaelmior 12y ago
JSON output is incredibly useful in combination with jq[1] for processing the output. Some things become much easier than with standard *nix tools IMO. [1] http://stedolan.github.io/jq/ http://stedolan.github.io/jq/

109 points by psibi 12y ago

chris_wot 12y ago

I'm not sure where the documentation is.

meowface 12y ago
Yeah, I struggled with that as well. The landing page of any software project like this should at the least have a lot of example syntax with output, plus a glaringly obvious link to full documentation.
timdorr 12y ago
It's in the README at the repo: https://github.com/awgn/cgrep https://github.com/awgn/cgrep
- chris_wot 12y ago
  Any examples?
thinkpad20 12y ago
It's following the illustrious Haskell tradition of barely-documented code. (Non-snarky follow-up: Haskell code is often woefully under-documented, for whatever reason. Possibly because people think that the type signatures are sufficient, or possibly because Haskell code lends itself to concision and documentation runs counter to that, or possibly because Haskell projects are often the result of one person's work, diminishing the need to explain oneself. In any case, it's an unfortunate fact of many Haskell apps and libraries.)

gingerlime 12y ago

This looks like a cool idea. I think a couple of (neat!) examples, stuff you can't easily do with normal grep, will go a very long way. The list of features is secondary in my opinion.

nichochar 12y ago
Seconded
hunt 12y ago
Taking this idea further, you could perhaps also have examples of use for each language.
stcredzero 12y ago
You basically had this with the Smalltalk refactoring Browser, where each search popped up displayed in a browser window. Then you could easily AND such searches together by executing a script in the browser window. Slightly more sophisticated combinations were possible with just a few lines of scripting. On top of that, everything above applied to syntax-driven rewrites and refactorings.

yawniek 12y ago

a binary for os x would be nice, since installing cabal/ghc currently is a bit of a pain

mattgreenrocks 12y ago
Isn't that just a brew install away?
- oinksoft 12y ago
  It is a package install away: http://www.haskell.org/platform/mac.html http://www.haskell.org/platform/mac.html On my machine it is significantly slower than `ag` (Silver Searcher) for basic searches, but it should install and run.
  - yawniek 12y ago
    ok thats a way. i usually like to install stuff with homebrew.

wangweij 12y ago

Examples or it didn't happen.

invernomut0 12y ago
e.g. $ cgrep -r --header "stdio.h" to search recursively for headers $cgrep -r --identifier VARname to search for a variable etc..

githulhu 12y ago

Darn, no SQL support. I often find myself wishing something like this existed for SQL, so I could, say, find all places where field X in table Y is updated, or referenced in a WHERE clause predicate, etc.

mh- 12y ago
interesting request; I've wanted something like this before but never enough to really look for it. I'm surprised there isn't a tool that can do this already.. perhaps under the guise of refactoring?

cheez 12y ago

How do I build this for Windows? I think I have something Haskell related installed because I see lambda as an icon on the .hs files.

jasonlfunk 12y ago

What is the difference between this and ack? http://beyondgrep.com http://beyondgrep.com

netghost 12y ago
This is aware of some basic language semantics like literals, identifiers, etc. Or so it seems. Peek at the github page https://github.com/awgn/cgrep https://github.com/awgn/cgrep for a little more info.

bogolisk 12y ago

blah.c: void foo(item *x) { x->blah(1, 2, 3); x->blah (4, 5, 6); blah (7, 5, 1); foo (4, 5, 6); x->blah (4, 5, 6); } void foo2(item y, item *x) { y.blah(1, 2, 3); y.blah (4, 5, 6); blah (7, 5, 1); foo (4, 5, 6); x->blah (4, 5, 6); } search in blah.c for a call to blah() with 5 as 2nd argument from any structure or pointer. cgrep --code --semantic '_1 . OR -> blah ( _2 , 5, _3 )' blah.c output: blah.c:6: x->blah (4, 5, blah.c:7: 6); blah.c:10: x->blah (4, blah.c:11: 5, 6); blah.c:18: y.blah (4, 5, blah.c:19: 6); blah.c:22: x->blah (4, blah.c:23: 5, 6);

res0nat0r 12y ago

Any examples or reasons why I should use this over the_silver_searcher?

WorldWideWayne 12y ago

It really sucks that 15 languages that people use less than C# are supported before anyone thinks of adding support for C#. Why does everyone hate Microsoft's languages and love Apples?

TallGuyShort 12y ago
The most reasonable explanation is that this is developed by (an) Apple user(s) and adding support for Apple's languages is simply easier and more valuable than adding languages for a platform they don't use. If it's worth it to you or other C# users, I'm sure they wouldn't mind you submitting a pull request.
- WorldWideWayne 12y ago
  They actually do support C#, but I missed it because I read the list too quickly.
djeikyb 12y ago
I've not tried it, but the linked article claims c# is supported. Quote: Languages support for Awk, C, Cpp, Chapel, Csharp, Css,
- WorldWideWayne 12y ago
  You know - I totally missed it because of the way it was written. Sorry for complaining! Thanks so much :)

egonschiele 12y ago

I've thought about something like this before, and I'm really excited to see how fully-featured it is. Written in Haskell is also a big plus.

mcrider 12y ago

Would love a UI for this and an editor -- I still use TextWrangler/BBEdit daily to grep large chunks of source code and then edit in place (e.g. for refactoring). Just getting the search results requires opening up each file individually then editing, which is just too slow.

ushi 12y ago

Funny, there was a bell-labs project with same name. It seems to be dead[0], but when we travel the time a few years back, we get a wonderful project homepage[1]. [0] http://www1.bell-labs.com/project/wwexptools/cgrep/ http://www1.bell-labs.com/project/wwexptools/cgrep/ [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20080513225010/http://www1.bell-labs.com/project/wwexptools/cgrep/ https://web.archive.org/web/20080513225010/http://www1.bell-...

edderly 12y ago

I was curious, but had no idea how to use this on Ubuntu sudo apt-get install haskell-platform download and extract the tarball cd awgn-cgrep-8af1beb cabal cgrep.cabal Unfortunately what stops me using it on a large codebase is that I can't exclude directories like .repo (not sure about .git).

volune 12y ago

How does this compare with Ack?

nodivbyzero 12y ago

Have you tried https://github.com/zeux/qgrep https://github.com/zeux/qgrep ??? Fast regular expression grep for source code with incremental index updates

kumarishan 12y ago

can it be integrated with sublime text ?

michaelmior 12y ago

JSON output is incredibly useful in combination with jq[1] for processing the output. Some things become much easier than with standard *nix tools IMO. [1] http://stedolan.github.io/jq/ http://stedolan.github.io/jq/