Club Amiga de Montreal - CAM/CAM_CD_1.iso/files/345.lha/Find_v3.9c/Find.doc

Text File | 1990-01-29 | 8.5 KB | 217 lines

NAME
           find (this doc for v3.9c)

SYNOPSIS
           find -[acgsv] <root dir> <pattern>

FUNCTION
           Searches a directory and its subdirectories for the pattern

INPUTS
           -[acgsv]     Options (see below)
           <root dir>   Any valid AmigaDos directory name
           <pattern>    A (very) restricted regular expression

RESULTS
           Displays the name(s) found on standard output, and maybe more
           depending on the options invoked

KNOWN BUGS
           With option -g, the prompt doesn't seem to be updated if you
           are using Conman or WShell. However, there is no problem with
           standard NewCon windows









                                Find
                                ----

November, 21st 1989                                  Author: Cedric BEUST

* A few lines to describe how it works
--------------------------------------

    In fact, I did my best so that my command does not need any
documentation to be used. This is due to the fact that I bothered a lot
when I tried to master the CLI for the first time since no documentation at
all was available at this time (ugh! Looks like prehistoric age!). I DO
THINK that any command should be self-explanatory. Commodore programmers,
do you hear me?

    All right, I said what I had to, so let's come to it.

    The initial idea was to have a Unix-like find command on Amiga. This
has never been supplied by Commodore and I have always wondered why.
Recently, I decided that I had wondered enough and I started programming
it. The result is far from having all the Unix' find possibilities, but
though, it helped me a lot (anyway, Unix' one has a lot of features which
nobody never uses. Commodore's ones as well).

     If you type 'find' with nothing at all, or with wrong parameters or
with a '?', you'll get the following lines (approximately):

  Find (v3.9c) - Recursive search of files
  Copyright Cedric BEUST - NICE (France)

Usage: find -[acgv] <source dir> <pattern>

    Options:

            -a:  Don't stop at first occurence
            -c:  Don't ignore case
            -g:  Change to directory found
            -s:  Stop as soon as something is found
            -v:  Display search steps

 Wildcards: ? (any character), # (none or several times) and * (anything)
 To abort search, type CTRL-C

     Isn't all that self-explanatory? As a matter of fact, it is. But yet,
I will add a few things.


* Syntax
--------

  - The options

      So far, there are five options:

      -a:
         Means that when a file is found, find doesn't stop and keeps on
         searching until it has searched all the directories. This is
         useful if you know that the name you are searching might be found
         in several directories. NOTE: this option is automatically set if
         you use a pattern. The reason why I did this is simple: if you
         use a pattern, then you can't tell whether the first name that
         will appear is the one you are looking for or not. And you
         wouldn't like the program to stop at this point, would you?
      -c:
         By default, find will ignore letter case, i.e.
             find jh0: test
         will either match 'test' (of course!), 'Test', 'TESt', and so on.
         With the -c flag on, only 'test' will be found.
      -g:
         This feature is especially useful in scripts. It makes a CD to the
         found directory. This allows to do something to the name found
         after it has been found (for example,  deleting it). For instance,
         using it with the -s flag could produce a little shell script that
         might delete all the hated .fastdir throughout your hard disk.
         Good idea, isn't it?
      -v:
         This is for your eye's pleasure! It merely displays the
         directories it is scanning with an indentation in order to get
         an idea of the hierarchy of the disk searched (and also to prove
         that it is well doing what you expect!).
      -s:
         This one forces find to stop after the
         first name found, bypassing what I said a few lines above. You
         will surely object that this option is redundant with the -a
         one, but I don't think so and I have a good reason for that.
         Suppose you want to write a script that deletes all the .fastdir
         on your hard disk (the idea is not mine but Cedric's. Yes,
         another one). You use a 'find -g jh0: .fastdir' and as soon as
         it is found, you delete it and you loop. OK. But suppose you want
         to delete a pattern... For example, all the .bak. Then, you have
         to force find to stop after each occurence it gets. That's what
         the -s option does. On the opposite, suppose that by default,
         find stops ALWAYS as soon as it finds something, and suppose
         there is an option to force it to continue. Will you always think
         to use this option when looking for a pattern? I don't think I
         will. So I prefer this solution.

   - The source dir
         No need to write long about that. Any device name will do, even
         an 'assign'ed one (jh0:, df0:, mydir:, jh2:lib, etc...). This will
         be the root directory, and find will then scan all its directories
         and subdirectories.

   - The pattern
         It may be a simple name or a pattern. This pattern follows
         AmigaDos' weird conventions about this: # and ? are accepted.
         I also provide the * wildcard which is a synonymous for #?. Use
         the ones you prefer (but ( ) and | are not yet implemented. If
         you often use these ones, let me know so that I know if it's worth
         adding them). Has anyone out there ever used the # character with
         something else than '?'? So why bother with this notation? Anyway,
         I decided to stick to it since I'd like my command to have its
         place in any c: directory. Let's see a few examples of pattern
         matching:

          a?c   -->  abc acc adc...
          a#bc  -->  ac abc abbc abbbc...
          a#?.c -->  a.c asadf.c aer.c...
          *.s   -->  myprog.s .s foo.S (if -c option not turned on)

       You see? I'll stop with these examples but I'm quite confident that
       my pattern matching routine will work correctly even in the worst
       cases (believe me, I've tested it quite a bit!). Anyway, I found
       out that I rarely use something else than the ones I just
       described.

  A CTRL-C may be used at any time to abort search. I bet you'll find this
feature useful when find is entering the depths of your directory and it
has already given you the name you were looking for!


* One last thing
----------------

  And this one deserves a special chapter since it is not said in the help
menu (nobody is perfect! But don't criticize or I'll add it in next
versions): if ever find couldn't find any file matching the pattern, it
will send a return code of 5 (it is a WARN code). This is useful in
scripts to know when find is finished with its work: all you have to do is
to include a 'IF WARN SKIP END ELSE...' and it will not loop forever.


:-)
  Well! Looks like I wrote a bit more than what I thought. And yet, it is
a soooo short command! There will be probably other versions, depending on
the suggestions I am made (this is for YOU!). But I can already announce
that there will probably be a Workbench version of this function (alike
Mac's one). But this will take much more work to do and will depend on the
number of requests I receive about it.

  A few thanks to all the ones who helped me improve this command and add
new options, and mainly:

- Cedric Nerot
    Guru proof thorough testing and the .fastdir application program
- Jean-Charles Godien
    Special thanks to him! Nifty pattern matching routine, JC!
- Pierre Ardichvili
    Sharp-witted suggestions
- Bruce Lepper
    Alpha, beta, gamma, ... and other-greek-letters versions tester
    despite him
- Henry J. Cobb
    For his precious advice regarding the prompt bug with the -g option

                        Enjoy!


You can send me your suggestions to this address:

      BEUST  Cedric
       "Promethee"
80 Av. du Bois de Cythere
       06000 NICE
         FRANCE
    Tel. [phone]


These ones are likely to change, but one of them at least should last
until summer 1990 (precise your mail is for C. BEUST)

        [e-mail]        (try this one first)
        [e-mail]
        [e-mail]
        [e-mail]    (not yet reachable as I am writing)