automate searches

[clickalot]

His,

I want to be able to:

1) copy some selected text (Ctrl + C will do
2) filter out some characters of the selected text into some string (also not difficult with bash)
3) and finally search this string inside text files in some directory. Preferably i want a nice and convenient visual application like "find in files" given by some editors, searchmonkey or even some indexing search apps like tracker or beagle

i really use this procedure a lot and i wish i could automate it like in windows with autohotkey

until now i tried automation tools like xnee, xautomation or xmacro, but i have problems with the installation and/or usage...

searchmonkey, for one, doesn't accept command line options for searching - that would be perfect for automating the procedure since all i'd need would be some little script and a keyboard shortcut...

i'm also thinking of going bash all the way since i already installed xclip to read the content of the clipboard; and the searching, even though a text based one, could be tailored almost to my needs...

but before i waste more time:

-> does anyone know or has any ideas on how to do this?!

thanks!

[clickalot]

here is a quick hack inspired by medit and using bash, the gnome-terminal and gnome keyboard shortcuts (note that i don't know how it all works. or even if it works 100%):

bash script, lets call it fif (Find In Files):

#!/bin/bash

if [ -z "$1" ]; then
# search clipboard
  search=`xclip -o -selection=clipboard -display="localhost:0"`
# Clean search string to use only alphanumeric characters:
  search=`echo -ne "$search" | tr -cs '[a-z][A-Z][0-9]' '.'` # This converts all non-alphanumeric #characters to dots, then squeezes each string of repeated dots into a single dot
else
  search=$1
fi

if [ -z "$search" ]; then
echo $search
  echo "Nothing to search!"
  read -n1
  exit 1
fi

if [ "${#search}" -lt "3" ]; then
echo $search
  echo "Search term is shorter than 2 characters ..." # Better dumdum filtering needed here :)))
  echo -n "Continue? (Y/n)"
  read keyin
  if [ ! "$keyin" = "Y" ]; then
    exit 0
  fi
fi

sdir='~/CD-LIST'
cd $sdir

echo -e "Searching '$sdir' for \033[1m$search\033[0m:"

find . -type f \( -iname "*.txt" -o -iname "*.csv" \) -print -follow | sed -e "s/ /\\\ /g" -e "s/'/\\\'/g" | xargs egrep -I -s -H -n -i -e "$search" > ~/bin/gsearch.txt

cat ~/bin/gsearch.txt| sed 's/.txt:/.txt:\n\tL:/g' | sed 's/.csv:/.csv:\n\tL:/g' | uniq -u
# arrange output: separate file and hit lines # BUG: "TXT", "CSV" and variants aren't seen..

echo "*** `cat ~/bin/gsearch.txt | wc -l` matches found ***"

echo -ne "\033[1mDone\033[0m searching '$sdir' for \033[1m$search\033[0m."
echo    " Use Shift+ Up, Down, Begin, End keys to navigate. Ctrl+ +/- to zoom in/out."

echo -ne "\033[47m\033[30m-> Press any key to quit terminal\033[0m" # echo only if inside a terminal window called SEARCH...
read -n1 # read one character

now create a new shortcut called fif (or whatever) with the command:

$ gnome-terminal --window-with-profile=search --command="fif" --geometry 200x100 --maximize  --zoom=1.0&

btw, i created a new gnome-terminal profile to my liking called "search"

and that's it
a terminal based search of my "database" in ~/CD-LIST

some graphical/mouse automation should follow... eventually ...

What do you think? and how do you do these things yourselves...?