blackarrow

"Universal" Text Finder

It's basically just grep in python... Nothing fancy, just an easy extensible way to find things....

Yeah, I know, it's "reinventing the wheel" but ehhh, this is easier to extend to cover any and all weird cases without having to memorize a bunch of obscure combinations of bash commands.

That out of the way, let's talk about what this actually does...

Quick Overview

Essentially Black Arrow (or ba for short) is a way to search through every line in every file and find matching keyword or regular expressions. It uses smart case, so if the search term is all lowercase it defaults to case-insensitive (mostly for ease of use).

You can also supply it with regular expressions and it handles them natively.

Other features include -

• excluding certain files or paths,
• replacing any matches that have been found,
• specifying the max depth to search (good for large directory structures),
• "pipe" mode for unix piping,
• open the files in the $EDITOR for manual parsing.

Installation

┬─[zoe@fillory:~/Dropbox/Projects/black-arrow]─[09:22:12 PM]
╰─>$ pip install --user blackarrow

Black-Arrow Script

┬─[zoe@fillory:~/Dropbox/Projects/black-arrow]─[09:33:40 PM]
╰─>$ ./black-arrow/blackarrow.py -h
usage: ba [-h] [-d DIRECTORIES [DIRECTORIES ...]] [-i IGNORE [IGNORE ...]]
          [-f FILENAME [FILENAME ...]] [-w WORKERS] [-p] [-e] [-l]
          [-r REPLACE] [-D DEPTH] [--dev]
          R

positional arguments:
  R                     Search term (regular expression)

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -d DIRECTORIES [DIRECTORIES ...], --directories DIRECTORIES [DIRECTORIES ...]
                        Director(y|ies) to run against
  -i IGNORE [IGNORE ...], --ignore IGNORE [IGNORE ...]
                        Things to ignore (regular expressions)
  -f FILENAME [FILENAME ...], --filename FILENAME [FILENAME ...]
                        Filename search term(s)
  -w WORKERS, --workers WORKERS
                        Number of workers to use (default numcores, with
                        fallback 6 unless set)
  -p, --pipe            Run in "pipe" mode with brief output
  -e, --edit            Edit the files?
  -l, --lower           Check strict lower case?
  -r REPLACE, --replace REPLACE
                        Replace text found in place with supplied
  -D DEPTH, --depth DEPTH
                        Directory depth to search in
  --dev                 Run in development mode (NO OUTPUT)

The Name

"Arrow! Black arrow! I have saved you to the last. You have never failed me and I have always recovered you. I had you from my father and he from of old. If ever you came from the forges of the true king under the Mountain, go now and speed well!"

― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit