ffind

ffind v1.5.0 - A sane replacement for command line file search

About ffind

ffind allows quick and easy recursive search for files in the command line. Very convenient to find a file you don't know exactly where it is or how it's called in a jungle of directories.

For example, when:

• Developing code. When it's that .js file? It was called my_feature_something_somethign.js, but not sure on which on of the 30 subdirectories it is. ffind my_feature
• Searching for a particular funny meme. It was under Images directory, but not sure if it was a .mp4 or .gif and if it was "dancing" or "DANCE"... ffind Images/ danc

See it here in action!

If you have deal with Unix find, it replaces the cumbersome find . -name '*FILE_PATTERN*' with ffind FILE_PATTERN (plus more niceties).

Main features

• Search recursively on current directory by default.
• Ignores hidden and source control files and directories by default, avoiding showing files you don't care.
• If the FILE_PATTERN is all in lowercase, the search will be case insensitive, unless a flag is set. Just write the search in lowercase to ensure maximum returns.
• Will print colorized output in glamorous red (default), except on redirected output.
• Can delete matched files, making very easy to clean compiled files, like .pyc or .o. Try ffind --delete pyc on your Python project

Common uses:

• ffind txt to return all plain text files in current tree structure.
• ffind ../other_dir txt to return all plain text files under dir ../other_dir
• ffind --delete pyc to delete files that contain pyc. Use ffind --delete pyc$ for only files ending in pyc

But wait, there is more!

• Input filename may be a full regex
• Regex can affect only the filename (default) or the full path.
• Follow symlinks by default, but that can be deactivated if necessary to avoid recursion problems
• Works in Python3! Older versions (until v1.3.1) are also Python 2.7 compatible for legacy support
• Can execute commands on matched files
• Experimental fuzzy search

Install

Requires pip, the tool for installing Python packages. You already have it installed by default on Python3!

pip install ffind

All arguments

Call ffind --help to display all the available arguments.

usage: ffind.py [-h] [-p] [--nocolor] [--nosymlinks] [--hidden] [-c]  [-i]
            [--delete | --exec "command" | --module "module_name args" | --command "program"]
            [--ignore-vcs] [-f] [--version]
            [dir] filepattern

Search file name in directory tree

More information here

Environment variables

Environment variables in your shell can be used to set up default options and parameters. See here for more information.

Manual install

From the source code directory:

python setup.py install

Test

To test ffind, you must install cram (you can use pip install cram). To run all the tests, run make test. This runs the tests on both Python 2 and Python 3. Running just make runs the test for Python 3.

The tests are under the tests directory; more tests are welcome.

License

The MIT License (MIT)

Copyright (c) 2013-2022 Jaime Buelta

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.