[mew-int 01079] Re: Using GREP to Search Subfolders

[David A. Panariti]

Hi,

I can think of three ways OTTOMH:

1) find <dir> -type f -print0 | xargs -0  grep -n <pattern>
   This is actually a builtin command in xemacs,
   M-x grep-find

2) Use a text indexer.  I use namazu.  I index every night and namazu
   comes with a contributed namzu.el that allows for very nice
   searching within [X]emacs.
   http://www.namazu.org
   Since the index is only updated nightly, you can use #1 for the
   current day's mail.

3) I've also added some lisp code to use agrep:
   AGREP(l)						 AGREP(l)
   NAME
       agrep  - search a file for a string or regular expression,
       with approximate matching capabilities 
   SYNOPSIS
       agrep [ -#cdehiklnpstvwxBDGIS ] pattern [ -f patternfile ]
       [ filename... ]

   I use the prefix arg to specify the number of mismatches
   agrep allows.  I can post this code if you're interested.
   (It currently only works on the current folder, however.)
   This'll need agrep:
   ftp://ftp.cs.arizona.edu/agrep/

davep


>>>>> "Chuck" == Charles Muller <acmuller at example.com> writes:

   Chuck> The structure of my Mew-Mail directories is such that I
   Chuck> have a folder named from/ under which I have many
   Chuck> sub-directories for various types of correspondence.

   Chuck> I have been successful with using the Grep tool to search
   Chuck> for strings within one directory, for example, if I do

   Chuck> grep -n -e XML *

   Chuck> while I am in the folder "from/tei" I can turn up all
   Chuck> strings with "XML". But what I would like to use Grep for
   Chuck> most of all is to find a message when I can't remember
   Chuck> where I filed it under the "from" folder. In other words,
   Chuck> I want to search for a string in all sub-folders under
   Chuck> "from".

   Chuck> I tried adding the -d switch, and -r switch, but in both
   Chuck> cases, the search turns up nothing. Can someone offer any
   Chuck> advice on how to do this?