xfg

Find paths anyway, then search for contents also, naturally.

• Recursive search
• Search both paths and contents by multiple keywords
  • Possible to search by regexp also
• Ignores hidden files and directories by default
• Support the Unicode
  • Let's try to search for emojis 😉
• Respect your .gitignore
  • Possible to use specific .xfgignore also
• Invoke your pager to print results automatically

There are so many features. You can check all options in below "Help Options" section.

Basic Usage of xfg

Just hit only xfg, then search for files and directories starting from current directory.

$ xfg

Below case, search for files and directories that include service-b in those paths.

$ xfg service-b

Specific:

$ xfg --path service-b

You can specify --start or -s option for where to start searching.

Output:

$ xfg service-b --start foo/bar

Search for files and directories that match the service-b in those paths, and extract contents that match the bar.

$ xfg service-b bar

Specific:

$ xfg --path service-b --grep bar

Note that the second argument and subsequent arguments are tereated as keywords to grep contents, like follow

       +--- Only 1st arg is to search for paths
       |
$ xfg service-b bar baz ...
                 |   |
                 |   +--- To search for contents
                 +------- To search for contents

Above command is equivalent:

$ xfg --path service-b --grep bar --grep baz

You can use multiple keywords to match for both --path and --grep like below

$ xfg --path foo --path bar --grep baz --grep qux

These keywords are treated as AND condition for each.

Notes

• Not follow symbolic links
• Skip to scan binary files or not content files
• Just testing only in Unicode ASCII yet

Regexp search

xfg can search for paths and contents by regexp.

-P is to search for paths

$ xfg -P "service-[a-g]"

-G is to search for contents

$ xfg -G "X_[A-Z]+_[A-Z]+"

Regexp keywords you input respect word boundaries by default. You can use -M or --not-word-boundary option to trun it off.

Ignore rules

• Ignored *.min.js or *.min.css files by default
• Ignored .git, .svn, node_modules or vendor directories and files in them by default
• Files and directories whose names start with a dot are ignored by default
  • Use -. or --hidden option to search for hidden-files/directories
    • Still ignore .git, .gitkeep, .gitkeep, .svn, node_modules, vendor, *.min.js and *.mmin.css
    • With -n or --search-default-skip-stuff option, you can search for above default skipping files and directories
      • -n is same behavior with --hidden and --no-default-skip option
• -a or --search-all option enables to search for all files and directories
  • You can ignore specific files and directories with --ignore option

Summary of switches to turn off ignore rules:

• -u or -a: Search all
• -n: Search most stuff
• -.: Search hidden stuff

.gitignore file

• Read files of git to ignore files or directories by default:
  • $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/git/ignore or $HOME/.config/git/ignore
  • $GIT_DIR/info/exclude
  • A path of core.excludesFile if it exists
  • $HOME/.gitignore
  • A .gitignore on the way of searching
  • Use --skip-gitignore option to avoid reading all above files to ignore.
• Support .xfgignore file to ignore files and directories as same as .gitignore file by default
  • $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/xfg/.xfgignore
  • $HOME/.xfgignore
  • You can specify .xfgignore file path by --xfgignore-file option
  • Use --skip-xfgignore option to avoid reading .xfgignore file

Help Options

  -p, --path stringArray            A string to find paths
  -g, --grep stringArray            A string to search for contents
  -s, --start stringArray           A location to start searching (default [.])
  -i, --ignore-case                 Ignore case distinctions to search. Also affects keywords of ignore option
  -P, --path-regexp stringArray     A string to find paths by regular expressions (RE2)
  -G, --grep-regexp stringArray     A string to grep contents by regular expressions (RE2)
  -M, --not-word-boundary           Not care about word boundary to match by regexp
  -C, --context uint32              Show several lines before and after the matched one
  -A, --after-context uint32        Show several lines after the matched one. Override context option
  -B, --before-context uint32       Show several lines before the matched one. Override context option
  -., --hidden                      Enable to search hidden files
      --skip-gitignore              Search files and directories even if a path matches a line of .gitignore
      --skip-xfgignore              Search files and directories even if a path matches a line of .xfgignore
      --no-default-skip             Not skip .git, .gitkeep, .gitkeep, .svn, node_modules, vendor, *.min.js and *.mmin.css
  -n, --search-default-skip-stuff   Search for hidden stuff and default skip files and directories)
  -a, --search-all                  Search all files and directories except specific ignoring files and directories
  -u, --unrestricted                The alias of --search-all
      --ignore stringArray          Ignore path to pick up even with '--search-all'
  -f, --search-only-name            Search to only name instead whole path string
  -t, --type string                 Filter by file type: directory (d), symlink (l), executable (x), empty (e), socket (s), pipe (p), block-device (b), char-device (c)
      --ext stringArray             Only search files matching file extension
      --lang stringArray            Only search files matching language. --lang-list prints all support languages
      --lang-list                   Show all supported file extensions for each language
      --abs                         Show absolute paths
  -c, --count                       Show a count of matching lines instead of contents
  -m, --max-count uint32            Stop reading a file after NUM matching lines
      --max-columns uint32          Do not print lines longer than this limit
      --max-depth uint32            Maximum depth of directories to search (default 255)
  -l, --files-with-matches          Print only the paths with at least one match
  -0, --null                        Separate the filenames with \0, rather than \n
      --no-color                    Disable colors for an output
      --color-path-base string      Color name for a path (default "yellow")
      --color-path string           Color name to highlight keywords in a path (default "cyan")
      --color-content string        Color name to highlight keywords in a content line (default "red")
      --group-separator string      Print this string instead of '--' between groups of lines (default "--")
      --no-group-separator          Do not print a separator between groups of lines
      --indent string               Indent string for the top of each line (default " ")
      --no-indent                   Do not print an indent string
      --ignore-permission-error     Do not print warnings of file permission error
      --xfgignore-file string       .xfgignore file path if you have it except XDG base directory or HOME directory
      --no-pager                    Do not invoke with the Pager
  -q, --quiet                       Do not write anything to standard output. Exit immediately with zero status if any match is found
      --stats                       Print runtime stats after searching result
  -h, --help                        Show help (This message) and exit
  -v, --version                     Show version and build command info and exit

Default Options

You can set default options in .xfgrc file. It's TOML file even without .toml extention, anyway.

color-path = "blue"
ignore = [
    ".vscode",
    ".idea",
]

.xfgrc file should be in XDG Base Directory or HOME directory. Or, you can specify a file path by ENV key: XFG_RC_FILE_PATH as you like.

export XFG_RC_FILE_PATH="/path/to/your_rc_file.toml"

File Type Search

You can search for paths by file type charactor on --type, -t option.

• d: directory just a directory
• l: symlink symbolic link
• x: executable executable file (NOT supported on Windows)
• e: empty file size is 0. Or, a directory has nothing
• s: socket socket file
• p: pipe named pipe FIFO
• b: block-device device file
• c: char-device Unix character device

For example, if you hit xfg --type d, then there are only directories.

Language Search

support to search specific language files by --lang option

For example, when you specify --lang perl in options, you will search for files which extentions are .pl, .pm, .t, .pod or .PL.

xfg --lang-list prints all supported languages.

Highlight limitation

xfg can highlight matched keywords in results. But the highlight feature is not perfect yet.

The xfg adds colors for highlight keywords for paths. However, if you use both (-P, --path-regexp) option and (-p, --path) option at the same time, and when both conditions are matching with same peace of string, then the ONLY (-P, --path-regexp) condition can highlight string so far. This limitation is same as grep contents condition. Regexp conditions are strong to be highlighted string than word match condition when both conditions matches with same pease of string.

Moreover, not yet highlighted extentions by --lang or --ext options even if it's matched.

Installation

Mac

brew tap bayashi/tap
brew install bayashi/tap/xfg

Binary install

Download binary from here: https://github.com/bayashi/xfg/releases

Go manual

If you have golang environment:

go install github.com/bayashi/xfg@latest

License

MIT License

Author

Dai Okabayashi: https://github.com/bayashi