The homegrown tools may only work on OSX. This is because unix utilities on OSX often have different options to do the same thing (such as sed’s -E on OSX and -r in Ubuntu).

find

find is a unix utility for searching files in a directory hierarchy. find is a powerful tool that comes with a lot of options. Some are more common then others.

Here are the options I use frequently:

• -name pattern - this will match filenames against the supplied pattern

• -exec command argument \; - runs the specified command against each file matched

  # Using -name to find all files or directories which match the pattern “*.rhtml” find ./ -name “*.rhtml”

  # Using -exec to find all rhtml files whose file contents match “Continuous Thinking” find ./ -name “*.rhtml” -exec grep -Hn “Continuous Thinking” {} \;

For development the -name option doesn’t help me much as TextMate’s Apple-Tab is far superior and faster to use, but editors like TextMate lack the efficiency of doing a -name and -exec combination from the command line. Sure TextMate has Apple-Shift-F to search file contents project wide, but what about all of those files you want to exclude (like log files), plugins (vendor/plugins) or the whole rails directory (vendor/rails).

TextMate doees give you the ability to exclude certain files (or directories) from your TextMate project, but it removes all references to them from within your TextMate project. This feature will speed up Apple-Shift-F searches, but sometimes you want to include those other files or directories.

The find command given the -name and -exec options can be a pain to type out. So I’ve written a helper script called findit.

findit

findit is a wrapper around find. It’s simple and fast. It’s usage is simple:

• findit where pattern

Maybe you’re looking for that view template which contains the text ‘Fuzzy Bear’:

zdennis@elijah:> findit app/views/ Fuzzy Bear
app/views//bears/new.rhtml:26:      <label for="fuzzy_bear">Fuzzy Bear</label>

Notice how you don’t have to use quotations around the arguments Fuzzy Bear. Everything after the first argument is treated as a part of the pattern.

Another example may be that you’re looking for where alias_method_chain is defined in rails. Well let’s look:

zdennis@elijah:> findit vendor/rails/ def alias_method_chain
vendor/rails//activesupport/lib/active_support/core_ext/module/aliasing.rb:23:  def alias_method_chain(target, feature)

So the power of findit comes from the fact that it’s easy to use and it handles most common occurrences of what a developer like me looks for such as the filenames that matched, the line numbers it matched on and a printout of those matching lines.

findit also ignores all .svn, CVS, .log, .project, .dylib and .o files. Of course you can change this though by editing the findit.

Download

Give it a try click “here”:http://www.continuousthinking.com/assets/2007/11/23/findit.rb

findfile

findfile is similar to findit except that it only matches on filename patterns. The usage is still the same:

• findfile where pattern

Recently I had some issues with installing PostgreSQL from “ports”:http://www.macports.org and there was a patch to the Portfile for the PostgreSQL port to get it to install correctly. I had no idea where the Portfile was so I let findfile to the work:

findfile /opt/local/var/macports Portfile | grep -i postgres

Download

Give it a try click “here”:http://www.continuousthinking.com/assets/2007/11/23/findfile.rb

locate | slocate

locate (and by extension slocate) may be one of the most under utilized unix tools in the mac world.

locate is used to find files by searching a database. Since it uses a database of file paths it is almost instantaneous whereas tools like find can take a while depending on how much files you have in a directory structure.

slocate can be thought of as “secure locate”. For more information consult this “doc”:http://linux.about.com/library/cmd/blcmdl1_slocate.htm

Here’s the same example from findfile but this time using locate:

locate Portfile | grep postgres
/opt/local/var/macports/sources/rsync.macports.org/release/ports/databases/postgresql7/Portfile
/opt/local/var/macports/sources/rsync.macports.org/release/ports/databases/postgresql80/Portfile
/opt/local/var/macports/sources/rsync.macports.org/release/ports/databases/postgresql80-doc/Portfile
/opt/local/var/macports/sources/rsync.macports.org/release/ports/databases/postgresql80-server/Portfile
/opt/local/var/macports/sources/rsync.macports.org/release/ports/databases/postgresql81/Portfile
/opt/local/var/macports/sources/rsync.macports.org/release/ports/databases/postgresql81-doc/Portfile
/opt/local/var/macports/sources/rsync.macports.org/release/ports/databases/postgresql81-server/Portfile
/opt/local/var/macports/sources/rsync.macports.org/release/ports/databases/postgresql82/Portfile
/opt/local/var/macports/sources/rsync.macports.org/release/ports/databases/postgresql82-doc/Portfile
/opt/local/var/macports/sources/rsync.macports.org/release/ports/databases/postgresql82-server/Portfile
/opt/local/var/macports/sources/rsync.macports.org/release/ports/databases/postgresql83/Portfile
/opt/local/var/macports/sources/rsync.macports.org/release/ports/databases/postgresql83-doc/Portfile
/opt/local/var/macports/sources/rsync.macports.org/release/ports/databases/postgresql83-server/Portfile
/opt/local/var/macports/sources/rsync.macports.org/release/ports/databases/postgresql_autodoc/Portfile
/opt/local/var/macports/sources/rsync.macports.org/release/ports/java/postgresql-jdbc/Portfile
/opt/local/var/macports/sources/rsync.macports.org/release/ports/python/py-postgresql-exception/Portfile
/opt/local/var/macports/sources/rsync.macports.org/release/ports/python/py-postgresql-greentrunk/Portfile
/opt/local/var/macports/sources/rsync.macports.org/release/ports/python/py-postgresql-layout/Portfile
/opt/local/var/macports/sources/rsync.macports.org/release/ports/python/py-postgresql-pqueue/Portfile
/opt/local/var/macports/sources/rsync.macports.org/release/ports/python/py-postgresql-proboscis/Portfile
/opt/local/var/macports/sources/rsync.macports.org/release/ports/ruby/rb-postgres/Portfile

locate loses its usefulness when it’s database is out of date. Fortunately it’s easy to add it to cron. Here’s what I have in my /etc/crontab file to have slocate update it’s database every night at midnight:

0 0 * * * root /opt/local/bin/slocate -u

locate comes with Leopard, and slocate comes with ports. I have my locate aliased to actually run slocate. They use different databases so pick one and use it or alias one command over the other like I have. There’s not much of a point to have both slocate and locate.

If you decide to give slocate a try you can install easily by running:

sudo port install slocate

whatsmyip

whatsmyip is a script I use in my “screen configuration”:http://www.continuousthinking.com/2007/1/7/screenrc-configuration so I can always tell what my local ip address is. ifconfig output is pain enough to look at and I try to avoid it at all costs:

zdennis@elijah:> whatsmyip 
en1: 10.0.4.100 en2: 10.37.129.2 en3: 10.211.55.2

Download

Give it a shot, click “here”:http://www.continuousthinking.com/assets/2007/11/23/whatsmyip.rb