Recursive GREP

As I said over and over, grep has two major problems. First, grep tries to run on all files, including binary files. Second, grep only does one directory at a time. So, I wrote this Python script, called regrep.py, to recursively grep all sub-directories.

Here is the script’s usage:

$ regrep.py <-i> [word]

For example, here is how to grep all sub-directories for a case insensitive word.

$ regrep.py -i TEXT_TO_FIND

You can download this Python script here, or you can copy-n-paste from down below.

#!/usr/bin/python
 
 ###############################################################################################
 # This script was written for www.philforhumanity.com.
 # If you have any questions, issues, or enhancement requests, please contact us via the website.
 # Use this script at your own risk.
 ###############################################################################################
 
 # System Libraries
 import argparse
 from subprocess import Popen, PIPE # System commands that save output to variable
 
 
 # Parse arugments
 parser = argparse.ArgumentParser()
 parser.add_argument("word", help="The word or pattern to grep for.")
 parser.add_argument("-i", help="Turn off case sensitivity.", action="store_true")
 args = parser.parse_args()
 word = args.word
 if args.i:
    case = "-i"
 else:
    case = ""
 
 
 # Variables
 command = 'find . -path ./.git -prune -o -type f -name "*" -print'
 	# Ignore .git directories with "-path ./.git -prune -o"
         # Only get files with "-type f"
 delimiter = "======================================================================"
 filecount = 0
 linecount = 0
 
 
 # Find all files
 p = Popen(command , shell=True, stdout=PIPE, stderr=PIPE)
 #print "Return code: ", p.returncode
 out, err = p.communicate()
 #print out.rstrip()
 #print err.rstrip()
 files = out.rstrip()
 
 
 # For each file, grep
 for filepath in files.split('\n'):   # Split by EOLN
     #print "A:" + filepath
     # Skip files that end with these extensions
     if filepath.endswith(("~",".bak",".zip",".gz",".msi",".doc",".ppt",".xls",".pack",".png",".jpg",".gif")):
         continue
     #print "B:" + filepath
 
     # Run "file" on the filepath and look for "text"
     command = 'file ' + filepath
     p = Popen(command , shell=True, stdout=PIPE, stderr=PIPE)
     out, err = p.communicate()
     if "text" not in out.rstrip(): continue
     #print "C:" + out.rstrip()
 
     # Grep
     command = 'grep -n ' + case + ' "' + word + '" "' + filepath + '"'
     #print "command: " + command
     p = Popen(command , shell=True, stdout=PIPE, stderr=PIPE)
     out, err = p.communicate()
     grepoutput = out.rstrip()
     if grepoutput:
         print delimiter
         print "File: " + filepath
         print grepoutput
         filecount = filecount + 1
         linecount = linecount + grepoutput.count("\n")+1
 
 
 # Print total results
 if (filecount > 0):
     print delimiter
     print '   Number of files =', filecount, '\n   Number of lines =', linecount
 
 
 # Exit
 exit ()

by Phil for Humanity
on 10/02/2014

Recursive GREP

Related Articles » UNIX Support: Recursively GREP » Command Loop » Wrapper Script

Related Articles
» UNIX Support: Recursively GREP
» Command Loop
» Wrapper Script