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http://www.peterbe.com/plog/grep-results-expanded/Grepexpansion.py

23^rd of April 2005

I find myself often running a grep command with the -n which means that when it shows the filename it also shows the line number it matched it on. Then what I often do is that I open the found file with my editor and move to that line with the gotoline feature. Here's a cute little bin Python script that expands the result a little bit. Try:

 $ grep -rin 'def set' *      
 frintranet/sequence/tests/testSequence.py:26:    def setUp( self ):
 slimmer/tests/testSlimmer.py:37:    def setUp(self):
 slimmer/tests/testSlimmer.py~:37:    def setUp(self):
 slimmer/tests/testSlimmer.py.bak:42:    def setUp(self):

Now, with Grepexpansion.py as executable (chmod +x Grepexpansion.py) located in the executable PATH:

 $ grep -rin 'def set' * | Grepexpansion.py
 -------------------frintranet/sequence/tests/testSequence.py--------------------
 23 |         Test SortEx .
 24 |     """
 25 | 
 26*|     def setUp( self ):
 27 |         """
 28 |         """
 29 | 
 --------------------------slimmer/tests/testSlimmer.py--------------------------
 34 |    self.time_records = records
 35 | 
 36 |     
 37*|     def setUp(self):
 38 |    self.timed_records=[]
 39 |    
 40 |     def tearDown(self):

You can get more less lines around it with an integer argument like this:

 $ grep -rin 'def set' * | Grepexpansion.py 5

...which will show 5 lines of code on either side.

Putting this together took me about 20 minutes and it's only really tested in my environment. There are of course a zillion things you can do to improve it. Please have a play with it and let me know if you're adding any functionality. Something I'd like to see is colourcoding :)

UPDATE I know that this can be done in grep but I don't know how which means I would have to study the man pages. With pyhton I can just do it and personally I prefer python over bash.

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