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Grep

The Source-Navigator Grep tool allows you to search for text patterns in source files throughout the project. It is more powerful than using grep at the command line because it:

allows you to search multiple directories.
searches only the files in your project.
can be restricted to a subset of the files in your project.
saves results of multiple searches, so you can review them later.
provides "one-click" Editor access to the lines of code matching your search.

To search for text patterns in the name of the symbols in the database, use the Retriever tool. For more information, see Retriever.

Using Grep

Start the Grep tool from the Windows menu by selecting New View -> Grep-Editor. This opens a Grep/Editor split window (for more information on split windows, see Adding a Browser to an Existing Window).

The Grep/Editor Window

In the Pattern text box, enter a regular expression then click the Search icon. For more information on regular expressions, see GNU Regular Expressions.

You can use the Files filter to limit your search; for example, entering *.c restricts the search to only C files. For a list of file extensions and their associated languages see Pattern Interpretation of Special Characters. Sample Grep Search Results shows the results of a sample Grep search.

Sample Grep Search Results

Clicking on an item in the Grep window displays the appropriate file in the Editor, with the cursor positioned at the selected line.

To step through the Grep results, click the left or right black arrow keys in the toolbar. To filter your Grep results, use the Format combo-box to select an option.

GNU Regular Expressions

A GNU regular expression¹ is a pattern that describes a set of strings. Regular expressions are constructed like arithmetic expressions: various operators combine smaller expressions to form larger expressions.

Ordinary Characters

An ordinary character is a simple regular expression that matches a single character and nothing else. For example, f matches f and no other string. You can concatenate regular expressions together. For example, foo matches foo and no other string.

Special Characters

You can combine regular expressions with regular expression operators, or metacharacters, to increase the versatility of regular expressions. Traditional expression characters are enclosed by brackets [ and ].

For example, [Aa]pple matches either Apple or apple. A range of characters is indicated by a dash -. [a-z] matches any lowercase letter and [0-9] matches any digit string between 0 and 9. You can string groups together, so that [a-zA-Z0-9] matches any single alphanumeric character.

To represent the - dash itself, it must be the last character, directly succeeded by the ]. To represent ] bracket, it must be the first character after the [ or the [^.

Special Characters lists special characters and examples of how to use them.

**Special Characters**
Symbol	Definition	Example
. (period)	matches any single character except a new line	a.b matches any three-character string beginning with a and ending with b (such as acb, a6b, a#b)
[ ... ]	matches characters between the brackets.	[af] matches either one a or one f [af]* matches any string composed of just a 's or f 's or the empty string
[^...]	matches any character except the ones specified	[^a-z] matches any characters except lower-case letters
^ (caret)	matches the empty string, but only at the beginning of the line	^foo matches foo and food, but not ofoo
$ (dollar sign)	matches the empty string, but only at the end of the line	fo$ matches a string ending in fo, but not foop
\ (backslash)	escapes special characters (including \)	fo\? matches fo?
\| (pipe)	is used to designate OR	foo\|bar matches either foo or bar
( ... )	is a grouping construct	foo(bar)* matches zero or more instances of bar with foo (such as foo, foobar, and foobarbar)

Note

In the | (pipe) example above, notice that foo|bar is matching either foo or bar. It's not matching o or b, resulting with either fooar or fobar.

Predefined Sets of Characters

Certain named classes of characters are predefined, but can only be used within bracket expressions.

**Character Classes**
Symbol	Definition	C-locale Equivalent
[:alnum:]	alphanumeric characters	[a-zA-Z0-9]
[:alpha:]	alphabetic characters	[a-zA-Z]
[:blank:]	space and tab characters
[:cntrl:]	control characters
[:digit:]	numeric characters	[0-9]
[:graph:]	characters that are printable and are also visible (a tab is printable, but not visible, while an a is both)
[:lower:]	lower-case alphabetic characters	[a-z]
[:print:]	printable characters (ASCII 32 and above), but not control characters
[:punct:]	punctuation characters
[:space:]	space characters (such as space, tab, newline, and page eject)
[:upper:]	upper-case alphabetic characters	[A-Z]
[:xdigit:]	hexadecimal digit characters	[0-9a-fA-F]

For example, [[:alnum:]] means [0-9A-Za-z] in the C-locale, except the latter form is dependent upon the ASCII character encoding, whereas the former is portable.

Repetition

A regular expression matching a single character may be followed by one of several repetition operator:

**Interval Expressions**
Symbol	Description	Example
* (asterisk)	post-fix operator that matches an expression 0 or more times	fo* matches a string starting with f and ending with a repeating o or no o's (such as f, fo, foo)
+ (plus)	post-fix operator that matches an expression at least once	f+o matches a string starting with one or more f's and ending with an o (such as fo, ffo, and fffo)
? (question mark)	post-fix operator that must match an expression once or not at all	f?o matches fo or o
{n}	preceding item is matched exactly n times	fo{2} matches foo
{n,}	proceeding item is matched n or more times	fo{2,} matches foo and fooo
{,m}	proceeding item is optional and is matched at most m times	fo{,3} matches f, fo, foo, and fooo
{n,m}	proceeding item is matched at least n times and at most m times	fo{1,3} matches fo, foo, and fooo

Escape Sequences

Some characters cannot be included literally in regular expressions. You represent them instead with escape sequences, which are characters beginning with a backslash ( \). A backslash is also part of the representation of unprintable characters such as a tab or newline.

**Escape Sequences**
Symbol	Description
\\	a literal backslash
\a	alert
\f	formfeed
\n	newline
\r	return
\t	horizontal tab
\v	vertical tab
\?	question mark
\(	left parenthesis
\)	right parenthesis
\[	left bracket
\]	right bracket

Two regular expressions may be concatenated; the resulting regular expression matches any string formed by concatenating two substrings that respectively match the concatenated subexpression. For example:

[a-b]	matches either a or b
[d-e]	matches either d or e
[a-c][d-e]	matches ad, bd, ae, or be

The backreference \n, where n is a single digit, matches the substring previously matched by the nth parenthesized subexpression of the regular expression. For example, \(ab)c\1 matches abbbcabbb, but not abbbcabb.

For additional information on regular expressions, please refer to a reference text such as Mastering Regular Expressions².

2. Friedl, Jeffrey E. F. 1997. Mastering Regular Expressions. ISBN 1-56592-257-3.


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