this thread is about using `grep` to find things, and this subthread is specific...

medstrom · 2024-09-03T11:21:58 1725362518

That's fair, I see many examples in this thread where people pass an exact string directly to grep, as you do. I'm an avid grepper, but my grep tool [1] translates spaces to ".*?", so I would just type "func lart(" in that example and it would work.

An incremental grep tool with just this one transformation rule gets you a lot more mileage out of grep.

[1] https://github.com/minad/consult/blob/screenshots/consult-li...

EDIT: Better demo https://jumpshare.com/s/zMENBSr2LwwauJVjo1wS

kragen · 2024-09-03T11:33:14 1725363194

that's going to find all the functions that take an argument named lart or of a lart type too, but it also sounds like a thing i really want to try

vitus · 2024-09-03T11:50:03 1725364203

Also, anything that contains "func" and "lart" as a substring, e.g. foobar(function), blart(baz).

It's not far off from my manually-constructed patterns when I want to make sure I find a function definition (and am willing to tolerate some false positives), but I personally prefer fine-grained control over when it's in use.

medstrom · 2024-09-03T12:04:38 1725365078

Mmh, I type "func\ lart(" when I need the literal string. But it's less often, so it's fair that it's slightly more to type.

kragen · 2024-09-03T12:12:52 1725365572

yeah!

alienchow · 2024-09-03T23:20:49 1725405649

For functions: grep -P '^func funcName\('

For methods: grep -P '^func [^)]+\) methodName\('

Hope that helps.

kragen · 2024-09-04T00:23:49 1725409429

thanks, that definitely looks better! pcre is kind of working against you here tho; i assume you're invoking it out of habit

alienchow · 2024-09-04T01:09:15 1725412155

I am actually unaware of downsides of PCRE. Could you explain? I hardly ever use literal grep nowadays.

kragen · 2024-09-04T06:47:58 1725432478

oh, i mean that instead of

    grep -P '^func [^)]+\) methodName\('

you could say

    grep 'func [^)]*) methodName('

which is a bit less typing

however, i have to admit that i sort of ensnared myself in my own noose here by being too clever! i forgot that grep's regexp dialect only supports + if you \ it, and it took me six tries to figure out why i wasn't getting any grep hits. there's a lot to be said for the predictability and consistency of pcre!

kiitos · 2024-09-04T20:08:48 1725480528

No need for any func, you can just

    grep '\) methodName\('

kragen · 2024-09-04T21:17:13 1725484633

    grep: Unmatched ) or \)

but your main point might be right; the few non-method matches to (pcre) '\)\s*\w+\s*\(' in /usr/share/go-1.19 seem to be uncommon things like this:

    static void __attribute__ ((constructor)) sigsetup(void) {
    void poison() __attribute__ ((weak));
    C3 = -(R + I) // ADD(5,6) NEG(-5,-6)