How do I grep for entire, possibly wrapped, lines of code?
- by NXT
When searching code for strings, I constantly run into the problem that I get meaningless, context-less results. For example, if a function call is split across 3 lines, and I search for the name of a parameter, I get the parameter on a line by itself and not the name of the function.
For example, in a file containing
...
someFunctionCall ("test",
MY_CONSTANT,
(some *really) - long / expression);
grepping for MY_CONSTANT would return a line that looked like this:
MY_CONSTANT,
Likewise, in a comment block:
/////////////////////////////////////////
// FIXMESOON, do..while is the wrong choice here, because
// it makes the wrong thing happen
/////////////////////////////////////////
Grepping for FIXMESOON gives the very frustrating answer:
// FIXMESOON, do..while is the wrong choice here, because
When there are thousands of hits, single line results are a little meaningless. What I would like to do is have grep be aware of the start and stop points of source code lines, something as simple as having it consider ";" as the line separator would be a good start.
Bonus points if you can make it return the entire comment block if the hit is inside a comment.
I know you can't do this with grep alone. I also am aware of the option to have grep return a certain number of lines of content. Any suggestions on how to accomplish under Linux? FYI my preferred languages are C and Perl.
I'm sure I could write something, but I know that somebody must have already done this.
Thanks!
