I want something like $ grep -rin "foo bar" but with the option to display the file location visually like tree but with the results trimmed so that only the recursive directories are displayed. It would be better if it was structured so that the directory listing is only displayed once with every location displayed within the directory tree. Like if I want to know every location where a method is called, I can quickly parse that on the command line. Anyone know of a tool that does this already or a simple technique, or do I need to script it myself?

  • Botzo@lemmy.world
    13·
    4 days ago

    grep -l will get you just the filenames

    tree --fromfile will read from stdin just fine

    So: grep -ril "foo bar" . | tree --fromfile -a should do the trick.

    Edit: removed -n from the grep incantation per below conversation.

      • Botzo@lemmy.world
        4·
        4 days ago

        Good point! No use for a line number when you’re explicitly dumping file names. And if it did work, would likely break the pipe to tree.

        I lazily copied the original and just added -l.

  • thingsiplay@beehaw.org
    12·
    4 days ago

    Combine both grep and tree commands:

    grep -rl "find" | tree --fromfile -F

    Edit: The rg example didn’t work correclty. Not sure what I was testing. But looks like the grep variant works as intended. Please report if its not.

    Another Edit, because this is fun: A simple function for your .bashrc (functions are like alias, but allow more complex code, such as arguments):

    treegrep() {
    # grep:
    #   --recursive             like --directories=recurse
    #   --files-with-match      print only names of FILEs with selected lines
    # tree:
    #   --fromfile              Reads paths from files (.=stdin)
    #   -F                      Appends '/', '=', '*', '@', '|' or '>' as per ls -F.
    grep --recursive --files-with-match "${@}" |
        tree --fromfile -F
}
  • solrize@lemmy.ml
    4·
    4 days ago

    I don’t understand what you’re asking: you want some kind of graphical display of the file structure? Grep per se doesn’t do that, but maybe you could match the output against “tree” output? I generally just use M-x grep in Emacs which doesn’t make a tree-like display, but lets me navigate to matched lines by clicking on them.

    • √𝛂𝛋𝛆@piefed.worldOPEnglish
      3·
      4 days ago

      The other post reply here came close enough. With the suggestion to use: tree --fromfile -a with grep. I’m still not fast enough with emacs to do stuff like this efficiently. I get lost in the documentation and do not use emacs daily.