Tracker Grep x86

Version 2.0.0
Released on Friday, 31 July 1998

Copyright © Savvy Software
Created by Matthijs Hollemans
All Rights Reserved

mahlzeit@bigfoot.com
http://home.concepts.nl/~hollies/

What is it

Tracker Grep is a simple Tracker add-on that I knocked up in a couple of hours because I got tired of going into a Terminal every time I wanted to do a grep. For those of you in the unknown, grep is a very handy command-line tool that searches text files for lines that match a given pattern. Gone are those days of command-line trouble, because from now on Tracker Grep lets you run grep directly from the Tracker.

How to install it

Put the file "Tracker Grep x86-G" into the directory "/boot/home/config/add-ons/Tracker/".

How to use it

Select the files that you want to examine. Then right-click on one of the files or open the "File" menu of the Tracker. Go to "Add-Ons" and choose "Tracker Grep x86-G". Alternatively you can press the keys "RightCtrl-Alt-G". If you don't select any files at all, Tracker Grep will look at all the files in the current directory.

In addition to that, you can tell Tracker Grep to look into sub-directories and follow symbolic links as well. (But if you do, then be aware that some of your links may be circular -- they indirectly point at each other -- which causes the search to loop forever if you don't cancel it at some point.)

Tracker Grep is no more than a graphical front-end to the grep tool that comes with the BeOS. (Grep lives inside the directory "/boot/beos/bin" in case you were wondering.) To be able to use Tracker Grep, you must know how grep works. See the BeOS Shell Tools Documentation for more information.

Hints

The search pattern that you type in the window of Tracker Grep is literally transferred to grep. Since grep runs in the shell, characters such as ( and * are not valid -- they have a special meaning. You should "escape" those characters with a back slash, in other words ( becomes \( and * becomes \*. Another option is to surround the search pattern with double quotes, for example "printf(". (Maybe this sounds funny to you, but I felt no urge to change it, because people that are used to running grep from the shell expect this kind of behaviour.)

Because grep was meant to examine text files, Tracker Grep will only work on files that have the MIME supertype "text" or "message". Normally this is true for all your text files, HTML files, e-mail messages, source code files and so on. If a file has another MIME type (or none at all), it will be ignored.

History

Version 1.0.0 (Saturday, 4 July 1998)

• First version.

• Tracker Grep now looks at all the files in the current directory if nothing is selected.
• Files may also have MIME supertype "message".

• This is a total rewrite (hence the major version number bump).
• The user interface has been improved (and is more responsive).
• Added a button to start and cancel the search.
• The results display now uses a fixed-width font.
• Added an option for subdirectory crawling.
• Added an option for traversing symbolic links.

Legal Stuff

Tracker Grep is freeware. You may use and distribute this product free of charge. The full source code is available on request, in case you are interested. Disclaimer of warranty: I am not responsible for whatever may happen to whomever, whenever.

Don't hesitate to send me an e-mail if you have questions, remarks, or bug reports.