Finding multiple patterns

[tjkirch]

I'd like to be able to search for multiple patterns, like with grep's -e argument. It seems (with fd 7.0.0) the only way is to use alternation in the regex pattern, but this can be less clear than multiple arguments, and is harder to build up programmatically.

[sharkdp]

Thank you for the feedback!

I certainly see the need for this, but I'm not sure we should introduce a new command-line argument, given that there is a reasonable solution via fd '(pattern1|pattern2)'. On the other hand, the analogy to grep would be nice. Unfortunately, -e is already taken for --extension.

Another option to achieve something like this could be the --path-before-pattern flag that we were discussing over in #312. This would allow us to use fd --path-before-pattern . pattern1 pattern2 ... (possibly with a shortcut for the flag).

[sharkdp]

Actually, the --path-before-pattern doesn't feel very natural for me. I'd be okay with adding a new --regexp <PATTERN> option in analogy to grep/rg, if someone wants to work on this.

[sharkdp]

I'm currently not planning to implement this. Going to close this for now, but happy to reconsider if there is a significant interest in this.

[aschmolck]

How about

fd Makefile --or GNuMakefile --or make

?

That reads naturally, and it would make it possible to add a git grep or find style boolean query language at some point.

[sharkdp]

Let's reopen this for further discussion.

[aschmolck]

Here is a concrete example I just did with find, I think it would be nice to be able to do the same thing with fd as well:

find . -type d -and \( -name node_modules -or -name build \) -exec rm -rf '{}' '+'

[sharkdp]

I'm definitely against including a full-blown query language with --and/--or. fd was never designed to be this powerful. It's focused on easier use-cases.

Your use-case can be solved by running

fd -td '^(node_modules|build)$' -X rm -rf

or

fd -td node_modules -X rm -rf
fd -td build -X rm -rf

Both of which are shorter than the find equivalent (which is not the main issue here though).

[zw963]

I'm definitely against including a full-blown query language with --and/--or. fd was never designed to be this powerful. It's focused on easier use-cases.

Your use-case can be solved by running

fd -td '^(node_modules|build)$' -X rm -rf

or

fd -td node_modules -X rm -rf
fd -td build -X rm -rf

Both of which are shorter than the find equivalent (which is not the main issue here though).

But, maybe we need a non-regexp OR pattern, following is a example, i guess is not so simple to do with fd.

find . \
                -name "* (????-??-??) \[??:??:??\].tar" -o \
                -name "* (????-??-??) \[??:??:??\].bak"

Can we support like this:

fd -IH -g '* (????-??-??) [??:??:??].tar' -g '* (????-??-??) [??:??:??].bak'

[tmccombs]

OR is actually pretty easy to do with regexes.

your example could be done with:

fd -IH '.* \(....-..-..\) \[..:..:..\]\.(tar|bak)'

AND is more difficult.