cxpgrep

A multi-color grep with convenient features

Introduction

cxpgrep wraps up grep with some frequently used options (to save typing), and highlights different patterns in different colors, and organizes the output in a way convenient for anchoring at any matching line in the file opened in Vim. It has the following features:

• By default includes the following grep options:

  -sPHInr --exclude=*~ --exclude-dir=.vim --exclude-dir=.git --exclude-dir=.repo --exclude-dir=.svn

• 1 color for each pattern - So a pattern (Perl regular expression) 'a|b' will have a and b in different colors.
• Easy to construct command lines like vim myfile +1270 to go to line 1270 of myfile.

Installation

Doing the following should NOT spoil your existing environment - You will only get 3 new commands h/cxpgrep/cxpgrep2 in the form of Bash function.

In ~/.bashrc:

1. source the script h, which is a multi-color pattern highlighter.
2. source the script cxpgrep, which uses the command h. The commands cxpgrep/cxpgrep2 will be available for use. cxpgrep2 just displays the output in a format different from cxpgrep.

Usage

• The command is like:

cxpgrep 'PAT1|PAT2|...' FILE-OR-DIRECTORY

Patterns will be highlighted in different colors in the output.

• It accepts other options of grep.
• To construct a Vim command line to jump to a matching line of a file, double click the file pathname and Shift + single click the line number in the cxpgrep/cxpgrep2 output.

Note

I designed a bunch of test cases to verify the implementation of cxpgrep and cxpgrep2. Cases can be added to the files cases_cxpgrep and cases_cxpgrep2, respectively. And there are 2 ways to use the cases: automated and interactive.

Automated:

source ch_tests_automated.sh cases_cxpgrep

Interactive:

source ch_tests_interactive.sh cases_cxpgrep

In both methods, one needs to compare the output of cxpgrep and grep -P. Certainly grep doesn't support multi-color highlighting.

Also, note that these 2 scripts are NOT to be run directly. They need to be sourced into the current shell environment. See above.

Releases

• 1.0
  • First working code
• 1.1
  • README and source code header comment updates

License

This software (cxpgrep) is distributed under the MIT license.