Brainstorming a friendlier find(1).
Goals:
- Work for 80-90% of use cases.
- DTRT most of the time.
- Don't punish the users.
ffind [opts] [pattern]
-r directory to root the search in (default: .)
-f follow symlinked directories and search their contents too
-d maximum depth to search
-0 separate matches with a null byte (useful for xargs -0)
-l force a literal pattern, even if it looks like a regex
-i case-insensitive matching
-v invert match
-b exclude binary files
-a don't ignore anything (vcs dirs, ignored files, etc can all match)
-u unrestricted search (vcs dirs are skipped, but ignore files aren't parsed)
-q semi-restricted mode (vcs dirs and ignore files skipped, but .ffignore used)
-s restrict possible matches to paths given on stdin
--after time match things modified after the given time, exclusive
--before time match things modified before the given time, exclusive
--since time match things modified after the given time, inclusive
--until time match things modified before the given time, inclusive
--at time match things modified at the given time (arbitrarily specific)
There's a lot of logic to times, but they're pretty intuitive to use in practice:
ffind foo --before today
ffind foo --after 2010-09
ffind foo --since yesterday
ffind foo --until 2010-09-05
ffind foo --at 8pm
ffind foo --at 8:00pm
ffind foo --since 10m
ffind foo --before 1h
ffind foo --since 2012 --before 2012-04
Times can be given in an "absolute" form, or an "ago" form:
2012-09-05 that date, inclusive
2012-09-05 14:55 that date and time
2012-09-05 8 pm that date and time
8 pm the last 8 PM that happened
14:55 the last 2:55 PM that happened
1h one hour ago
1h30m one hour, thirty minutes ago
1d one day (24 hours) ago
Bare times like 8 pm always refer to the last time they happened. It may be
today if you're running it later in the day, or yesterday if it's in the
morning.
There are also some special forms:
yesterday
today
These are exactly equivalent to specifying the year-month-day form.
There are two types of date range filters, inclusive and exclusive. For example:
2009-------2010-------2011-------2012------...
--since 2010 [..................................>
--after 2010 [.......................>
--until 2010 <.....................]
--before 2010 <..........]
--since 2010 --before 2012 [....................]
2009-------2010-------2011-------2012------...
The precision of dates depend on how precise you specify them. For example:
10----11----12----1-----
--since '11 am' [.................>
--since '11:30 am' [.............>
--after '11 am' [...........>
--after '11:05 am' [................>
10----11----12----1-----
"Ago" times resove to one specific millisecond. For example:
'1m'and'1m0s0ms'are equivalent.'1h'and'1h0m0s0ms'are equivalent.'1d12h'and'1d12h0m0s0ms'are equivalent.'2012-09-05 11 am'and'2012-09-05 11:00:00.000'are equivalent.
Examples:
Current time: 1:30
10----11----12----1-----
--since '1h' [........>
--since '30m' [.....>
--after '1h' [........>
--before '2h15m' <.......]
10----11----12----1-----
When used with --at the scope is determined by how you give the time:
--at '2010'
matches things modified in the year 2010
--at '2012-09'
matches things modified in September 2012
--at '1 pm'
matches things modified between 13:00:00 and 13:59:59
--at '1:00 pm'
matches things modified between 13:00:00 and 13:00:59
--at '1:00:00 pm'
matches things modified between 13:00:00 and 13:00:00 999ms
--at '0h' (performed at 8:55 AM)
matches things modified between 8:00 and 8:59:59
roughly equivalent to --after 55m in this case
"this hour"
--at '1h' (performed at 8:55 AM)
matches things modified between 7:00 and 7:59:59
"last hour"
--at '1h30m' (performed at 8:55 AM)
matches things modified between 7:25:00 and 7:25:59
--at '5m' (performed at 8:55 AM)
matches things modified between 8:52:00 and 8:52:59
Type options:
-A match all types of things (default)
-F match all types of files (real and symlinked)
-D match all types of dirs (real and symlinked)
-E match real (non-symlinked) files
-C match real (non-symlinked) dirs
-X match symlinked files
-Y match symlinked dirs
-R match real (non-symlinked) things
-S match symlinked things
Options can be combined, and will be unioned:
-R == -EC
-RS == -A
-EXC == -FC
-FS == -EXY
Examples:
-D match any kind of directory
-R match all real things
-FC match any kind of file, and real directories
The type hierarchy:
all things (A)
/ \
/ \
files (F) directories (D)
___________/ | | \________
/ | | \
real files (E) symlinks to files (X) real dirs (C) symlinks to dirs (Y)
\ \ / /
\ ---\---- /
\ / \ /
----real things (R) symlinked things (S)------
\ /
\ /
all things (A)
Ignored by default:
.hg/**
.git/**
.svn/**
Ignorefiles parsed by default:
.ffignore
.hgignore
.gitignore
Ignore options:
+------------------------------------------------------------+
| parse .ffignore | parse VCS ignore files | ignore VCS dirs |
+-----------------+------------------------+-----------------+
default | yes | yes | yes |
-q | yes | | yes |
-u | | | yes |
-a | | | |
+------------------------------------------------------------+
- Ignores VCS directories for you.
- Ignores stuff in .gitignore, .hgignore, etc for you.
- Faster when running in a VCS-managed tree because it can ignore a lot.
- Saner command line syntax (normal options instead of a crazy expression language).
- Designed to do the right thing, usability-wise, in most cases.
- Faster when running in a non-VCS-managed tree (because ffind's ignoring doesn't help it).
- More powerful expression language, when you need to do something crazy.
My immediate reaction to the
(/foo/bar)./baz/spamis "wtf?" -- I think it will be a gotcha much more often than it will be desired behaviour. You're walking dirs rooted at.so least-surprise matching should be rooted at.also.