File finding Utility

myfind.py

#!/usr/bin/env python

"""myfind

Usage:
  myfind.py [--directory=<dir>] [--pattern=<p>] [--text=<text>]
  myfind.py -h | --help
  myfind.py --version

Examples:
  myfind.py
            lists all files in the current directory
  myfind.py --directory='/home/gene' --pattern='*.py'
            lists all .py files in /home/gene
  myfind.py --directory='/home/gene' --pattern='*.py' --text='spam''
            lists all .py files in /home/gene containing the text spam

Options:
  -h --help          Show this screen.
  --directory=<dir>  Directory to start searching (default: .)
  --pattern=<p>      Files to look for (default: *.*)
  --text=<text>      Text to search for (default: 'None')
"""

from docopt import docopt
import os
import fnmatch

# do the walk
def walk(starthere, lookfor):
    for (root, dirs, files) in os.walk(starthere,followlinks=True):
        for fname in files:
            if fnmatch.fnmatch(fname,lookfor):
                yield(os.path.realpath(os.path.join(root,fname)))

if __name__ == '__main__':
    arguments = docopt(__doc__, version='myfind v0.001')

    if arguments['--directory']:
        starthere = os.path.abspath(arguments['--directory'])
    else:
        starthere = '.'

    if arguments['--pattern']:
        lookfor = arguments['--pattern']
    else:
        lookfor = '*'


    if arguments['--text']:
        text = arguments['--text']
    else:
        text = None

    for filename in walk(starthere,lookfor):
        if text is not None:
            try:
                with open(filename,'r') as f:
                    if text in f.read():
                        print filename
            except IOError:
		# permission/link followup failure, etc
                pass           
        else:
            print filename

Note, that syntax for defaults should use square brackets—[default: *.*], not (default: *.*).

Hey,

You recently wrote a response to my linux journal article (which I will respond to at some point very soon when I get a minute)

Thought I would write some alternatives to what your program is doing but first let me say something else. This seems like a really nice effort and is a perfectly valid way to solve the problem.

so for the use cases u list in the source:

myfind.py --> ls
myfind.py --directory='/home/gene' --pattern='.py' --> ls *.py
myfind.py --directory='/home/gene' --pattern='.py' --text='spam'' --> grep -r "spam" *.py

Often a good grounding in the various gnu utilitys such as cat, head, tail, grep and even some sed can come in very handy.

Keep up the good work.

There was a problem with the formatting of the previous comment,

the second example should read:
myfind.py --directory='/home/gene' --pattern='_.py' --> ls _.py