Wed 28 December 2016

For a while I have wanted a smarter grep. A grep that understands Python syntax and idioms.

Over the last week or two I had a go at writing this and called it pynd (python find). As a very young project it is likely to change and evolve but I would love some feedback. Is this something you think you would use? What features would you like to see? Please send me your feedback.

I have spent lots of time grepping huge Python projects, pynd is starting to make that easier for me.

What can it do?

pynd is best demonstrated with some simple examples from the docs, ran against another project of mine.

Find and list all public functions

$ pynd -- def -- public ./ retrace . py 181 : def retry ( * dargs , ** dkwargs ): 105 : def delay ( self , attempt_number ): 117 : def delay ( self , attempt_number ): 128 : def attempt ( self , attempt ): 140 : def attempt ( self , attempt_number ): 150 : def validate ( self , result ): 159 : def validate ( self , result ): 171 : def delay ( self , attempt_number ): 174 : def attempt ( self , attempt_number ): 177 : def validate ( self , result ):

or, with the --private flag.

$ pynd -- private -- def ./ retrace . py 49 : def _update_wrapper ( wrapper , wrapped , 67 : def _wraps ( wrapped , assigned = functools . WRAPPER_ASSIGNMENTS , 233 : def _setup_limit ( self , limit ): 248 : def _setup_interval ( self , interval ): 263 : def _setup_validator ( self , validator ): 276 : def _nice_name ( self , thing ):

Look for each time a class instance was created

$ pynd -- class Interval -- call ./ retrace . py 100 : class Interval ( _BaseAction ): 251 : self . _interval = Interval ()

Search only within docstrings

$ pynd -- doc "decorator" -- ignore - case ./ retrace . py 181 : def retry ( * dargs , ** dkwargs ): The retry decorator . Can be passed all the arguments that are accepted by Retry . __init__ . 210 : class Retry ( object ): The Retry decorator class . This class handles the retry process , calling wither limiters or interval objects which control the retry flow .

Everything else

Check out pynd --help

$ pynd --help usage: pynd [-h] [--version] [--ignore-dir [IGNORE_DIR [IGNORE_DIR ...]]] [--ignore-case] [--files-with-matches] [--show-stats] [--public | --private] [--verbose | --debug] [-d] [-c] [-f] [-i] [-C] [-a] [PATTERN] [FILES OR DIRECTORIES [FILES OR DIRECTORIES ...]] Search for PATTERN in each Python file in filesystem from the current directory down. If any files or directories are specified then only those are checked. positional arguments: PATTERN The pattern to match against. This must be a valid Python regular expression. FILES OR DIRECTORIES A file or directory to limit the search scope. This can be provided multiple times. optional arguments: -h, --help show this help message and exit --version show program's version number and exit --ignore-dir [IGNORE_DIR [IGNORE_DIR ...]] A pattern to exclude directories. This must be a valid Python regular expression. It can be provided multiple times. --ignore-case Make all the regular expression matching case insesitive. --files-with-matches Don't output all the results, just the paths to files that contain a result. --show-stats At the end, show some stats. --public Only show results considered to be public in Python. They don't start with an underscore. --private Only show results considered to be private in Python. They start with an underscore. --verbose Explain what is happening. --debug Output excessively to make debugging easier -d, --doc Match class and function docstrings. -c, --class Match class names. -f, --def Match function names. -i, --import Match imported package names. -C, --call Match call statements. -a, --attr Match attributes on objects

What next?

That was just a super quick tour of some of the features. Now I just need to settle in and use the project for a while and hopefully find a few others to do the same. Then we can see what to do next.

Get involved.

See the contributing docs and the roadmap or just join in on Github.