Howdy. Looking to see if I can’t find two basic applications for Linux, that seem to evade me thoroughly.
GUIed indexed file search for personal desktop which supports boolean AND. Certainly I could do find | grep | grep | grep | grep (for ANDs), but this is slow and not as easy to get the files into my text editor. Only thing I could find was Webglimpse, but it seemed to only have command line or web server mode.
I’m also trying to find some sort of text editor that will allow me to do split panels, so I can display two files side-by-side (not as a diff, but just because they share globals and I have a bad memory.) I couldn’t find this in Anjuta (which I had to install after its settings file got messed up somehow and it couldn’t be started again.)
Bit of a long shot, but is there any application which also lists files down the side instead of across the top? I’m trying to tab between 20 different files which is a pain when my tabs scroll off the side.
Mmmm, I was hoping for something small and free like The Gun or such (but for Linux.) I can’t use the IDE features of the IDE, so just need a good source code editor. gedit would be good enough except that it is missing page splitting (and the visual wonkiness of the text resizing when you scroll or move the cursor disturbs me about the authors.)
Not to start an emacs vs. vim debate, as I think they can both handle #2, but gvim is my text editor of choice. Does both vertical and horizontal screen splits. Small (at least relative to emacs), although perhaps not as small as you’d like. No tabs either, as far as I’m aware of.
If your system doesn’t have it already installed, you most likely want to make sure you get gvim and not just vim (which is command line).
Oh, as to #1 – I think konqueror might do ya, although it might also be overkill. It allows you to use regular expressions when searching for files.
Now that I think about it (and since you mention you’re using them), both grep and find do also. Have you looked into that? Perhaps you’d want to look here for more, search for “Using Compound Conditions”.
Digital Stimulus gvim seemed to not make it’s way into my distro, and I haven’t tried to specifically add it yet. Will check tomorrow–though I had hoped to get something that wasn’t based on a history of keyboard shortcuts (again, bad memory–though I’ve got dd, i, esc, :wq, and :q! down in vi.)
I’ve tried to install some k*** stuff, but I don’t have KDE (?) installed and it seemed like I was going to have to download 30 rpms to get just kfind working–and finally ended up getting to a point where one of the packages required that I go find the original install CD for Fedora.
And having already been forced off Gnome into Xfce and Nautilus into Xffm just because the sucker was so slow and everything ran so funky, trying out the k’s instead of the g’s–which I gather are even larger packages, I can’t say that Konqueror sounds appealing.
I fear that the middle ground between arcane and extraneously bloated might actually not exist in the Unix world, but seemed best to send out a tentacle or two.
Khadaji Not yet. So far I have tried googling and seen nothing that seemed to be what I was looking for.
Never understood the debate, as they are good for different things. But I would point out that emacs satisfies both of the OP’s original requests. For #1, you still have to write a regex for your search, but as it begins returning results, you can pull each file into the editor with a keystroke. Searches won’t be indexed though. And of course you have to set aside three weeks to learn how to do basic emacs stuff like “save a file” and “exit the application.”
Is there a word for “suggesting an arcane unix tool to someone who asked for a GUI application, knowing that they don’t want it, even if it is the ‘best’ solution”?
For the search portion, you might do better to look for a Java app rather than a specifically Linux utility. I am thinking of Apache Lucene, which is an indexed search library. Lots of people are making tools with it, and I can’t recommend any particular one, but here’s a list.
Yeah, vi (and related) is a hassle to learn, as is emacs (as spotmaker points out). Although you can use the mouse for all the commonly done things, so there’s really nothing that is necessary to learn there. If you’re using Fedora, rpms should be readily available. Another thing to look at are “folds”, which allow you “compress” sections of the file to one line in the display. Nifty, although I’ve not used them enough to give instructions.
How about “Nick Burns-ing”? (Saturday Night Live reference.) Other than that, I’m at a loss (though it would be great to claim authorship on such a sniglet).
For the record, the only reason I mentioned more on find is that SageRat is already using it and it is faster when not piped. Certainly not as easy (and not GUI), but better than not having a tool at all.