Simple Python script to search the files by pattern in the active GCC include paths.

search_includes.py

#!/usr/bin/env python3
# pylint: disable=missing-docstring
# pylint: disable=invalid-name

"""GCC Includes Search Script

This script allows to search the files among all paths that GCC currently set in the includes.
It is helpful for debugging problems with the old files and finding conflicts between multiple headers
of different versions of the same library.
"""
import os
import os.path
import argparse
import subprocess
import locale
import pathlib

# Force the UTF-8 locale here
locale.setlocale(locale.LC_ALL, 'en_US.UTF-8')

# For now works only for GCC
def get_gcc_include_paths():
    startline = "#include <...> search starts here:"
    cmdline = ["cpp", "-v", "/dev/null", "-o", "/dev/null"]
    p = subprocess.Popen(cmdline, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.PIPE)
    _, err = p.communicate()
    # Interesting output is in stderr:
    lines = err.decode('utf-8').split('\n')
    includes = []
    if startline in lines:
        start = lines.index(startline)
        end = len(lines) - start
        for i in range(1, end):
            line = lines[start + i].lstrip()
            if os.path.exists(os.path.dirname(line)):
                includes.append(pathlib.Path(line))
    return includes

def include_search(directories, names):
    matches = []
    for includedir in directories:
        for name in names:
            for path in includedir.rglob(name + '*.h'):
                matches.append(path)
    return matches

if __name__ == "__main__":
    parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(description="Search among compiler include paths")
    parser.add_argument("-n", "--names", nargs="+", help="Names to search")
    args = parser.parse_args()
    if args.names is not None:
        includedirs = get_gcc_include_paths()
        print(includedirs)
        matches = include_search(includedirs, args.names)
        if matches:
            print("Found {0:d} matches".format(len(matches)))
            for m in matches:
                print(m)