Pluck 1.0 build: 9470 released: 2008-06-04

Scans a collection of files for instances of a regex pattern.

Copyright: (c) 2012 Canadian Mind Products.

Java application.
Download from: http://mindprod.com/products1.html#PLUCK

===> Free <===
Full source included.
You may even include the source code, modified or unmodified
in free/commercial open source/proprietary programs that you write and distribute.
May be used freely for any purpose but military.
For more details on this restriction, see
http://mindprod.com/contact/nonmil.html
If you include any Canadian Mind Products code in your own applications,
your app too must be labeled non-military use only.
All Java jars and source code are included.

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Prerequisites:

This program runs under any OS,
(e.g. Win2K/XP/Vista/W7x86/W7-64/OSX/Linux/Solaris/AIX...) so long as you have
<><> Java version 1.5 <><> or later installed (32-bit or 64-bit Java).
See http://mindprod.com/jgloss/installingjava.html for details.

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Installing on a PC:

Download source and compiled class files to run on your own machine as an application.
First install a recent Java JDK or JVM.
See http://mindprod.com/jgloss/installingjava.html.
To install, extract the zip download with WinZip
(or similar unzip utility) into any directory you please,
often J:\ --  ticking off the "use folder names" option.
To run as an application,type:
java -ea -jar J:\com\mindprod\pluck\pluck.jar {put any parms here}

adjusting as necessary to account for where the jar file is.

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Installing on a MacIntosh:

Use Safari to download source and compiled class files to run on your own machine as an application.
Safari will automatically unpack the zip into ~/Downloads (version 10.5)
[or on the Desktop (version 10.4 and earlier)].
First install a recent Java JDK or JVM.
See http://mindprod.com/jgloss/installingjava.html.
You may optionally move the download tree to a permanent home.
I don't have a MacIntosh, just a PC, so I can't test my Java programs for Mac compatibility.
In theory they should work without problems, but in practice that does not always happen.
If you have problems please, let me know, preferably with screenshots and complete verbatim error messages.
To run as an application, without parameters, just double click the jar file.

To run as an application with parameters, in bash shell type:
open Terminal.app
cd ~/Desktop
java -ea -jar com/mindprod/pluck/pluck.jar {put any parms here}

adjusting as necessary to account for where the jar file is.

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Rebuilding:

The zip already contains the necessary class and jar files, so unless you modify
the program, there is no need to recompile the source or rebuild the jar.
Configure.java basedir="E:/" in rebuild.xml to the drive where your files are.
Use ANT and rebuild.xml, not build.xml, to recompile and recreate the jar.

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Use:

Scans multiple files looking for a REGEX pattern, and
summarised what it finds as a CSV file.

java -jar C:\com\mindprod\pluck\pluck.jar  "\.[a-z]+\." E:\temp\temp.csv E:\somedir

or

java -jar C:\com\mindprod\pluck\pluck.jar  "\.[a-z]+\." console E:\somedir\somefile.txt  C:\temp -s G:\myApps

adjusting as necessary to account for where the jar file is.
The first parameter is the regex pattern. See
http://mindprod.com/jgloss/regex.html for how to compose them.

The next parameter is where the output in to go.  use the
word console to have the output appear on the console.

Then put a list of files and directories on command line you
want to scan where -s means recursively include all
subdirectories for everything to the right of -s.

It will look only for *.html, *.htm, *.xml, *.txt
extensions.  You can't change that via the command line,
though you could modify the program.

The command line does not currently support wildcards, e.g.
ap*.txt or ff?.html.  You need to specify the full names of
files or directories, or . to mean all the files in the
current directory.

When you write your regex expression, you don't double your
\. You are not creating a Java string literal.

It can be tricky to get various characters in your regex passed through
to the Pluck program.

Awkward Characters on the Windows Command Line
Char    Special Meaning         How to pass it through to the program
******  **********************  ***************************************
space   separates parameters    enclose the whole parameter in quotes "
<       input redirection       enclose the whole parameter in quotes "
>       output redirection      enclose the whole parameter in quotes "
|       pipe                    enclose the whole parameter in quotes "
'       none                    enclose the whole parameter in quotes "
"       parameter delimiter     write it as \" and enclose the whole parameter in quotes "
%       macro replace           write it as %%

If you are using Linux bash, or other Bourne compatible or
csh compatible shell, enclose your regex in single quotes,
'...'. Then the only character you need to worry about
inside the regex is ' itself which needs to be encoded as
'\'' i.e. apos, backslash, apos, apos. This seems rather
long winded. What you are doing is ending the string, doing
the quote (quoting it with \ much as you would in Java
string literals), then starting it up again, concatenating
all three pieces.

Pluck echos what the command processor gives it for the
regex expression. Verify it did not mangle any of your
characters.

If you are having trouble solving your problem with Pluck
and regexes, you might precondition the files by converting
all newlines and control chars to space, running the files
to be scanned through a tidy program, such as:

http://tidy.sourceforge.net/

or running HTML to be scanned through the Compactor program.
See:

http://mindprod.com/products1.html#COMPACTOR

You might consider sifting through malformed HTML with
TagSoup. See:

http://mindprod.com/jgloss/tagsoup.html

You might even write a full-blown parser. See:

http://mindprod.com/jgloss/parser.html


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Version History:

 1.0 2008-06-04 initial release

-30-