fileutil

fileutil , a Tcllib module, provides utilties for working with files and directories.

See Also

directory recursion
NR-grep: A Fast and Flexible Pattern Matching Tool
Unixy minitools

Documentation

fileutil official reference
fileutil::magic::cfront official reference
fileutil::magic::cgen official reference
fileutil::magic::filetype official reference
fileutil::magic::rt official reference
fileutil::multi official reference
fileutil::multi::op official reference

Modules

fileutil::traverse

See also the modules in the Documentation section, which don't yet have a wiki page

Commands

  • ::fileutil::fullnormalize path
  • ::fileutil::test path codes ? msgvar ? ? label ?
  • ::fileutil::cat ( ? options ? file)...
  • ::fileutil::writeFile ? options ? file data
  • ::fileutil::appendToFile ? options ? file data
  • ::fileutil::insertIntoFile ? options ? file at data
  • ::fileutil::removeFromFile ? options ? file at n
  • ::fileutil::replaceInFile ? options ? file at n data
  • ::fileutil::updateInPlace ? options ? file cmd
  • ::fileutil::fileType filename
  • ::fileutil::find ? basedir ? filtercmd ? ?
  • ::fileutil::findByPattern basedir ? -regexp|-glob ? ? -- ? patterns
  • ::fileutil::foreachLine var filename cmd
  • ::fileutil::grep pattern ? files ?
  • ::fileutil::install ? -m mode ? source destination
  • ::fileutil::stripN path n
  • ::fileutil::stripPwd path
  • ::fileutil::stripPath prefix path
  • ::fileutil::jail jail path
  • ::fileutil::touch ? -a ? ? -c ? ? -m ? ? -r ref_file ? ? -t time ? filename ? ... ?
  • ::fileutil::tempdir
  • ::fileutil::tempdir path
  • ::fileutil::tempdirReset
  • ::fileutil::tempfile ? prefix ?
  • ::fileutil::relative base dst
  • ::fileutil::relativeUrl base dst

What other file-related procs would be useful?

Other procs that would be useful to add would include wc, tee, head, tail, and perhaps some AWK'ish type functions ala Tclx.

LV: Anyone have a Tcl version of the dircmp command [L1 ]? I don't see it in the cygwin package list, and when I did a casual search on google.


VI 2003-11-28: Nice of you to ask. There's a list above, other than that: tail -f, split, join. I use tkcon as my main shell on a wimpy laptop. Fewer dlls loaded is good..


LV: I think some procs emulating functionality (not necessary flags, etc.) of Unix commands such as:

  • cut - extract one or more columns of text from the input file
  • join - create the union of one or more files containing columns of data, using a common column as an index
  • sort - sort a file based on the contents of one or more columns
  • comm - extract rows of data common, or uncommon, between 2 or more files
  • uniq - extract unique rows (or count the occurances of unique rows) in a file

would be useful. Several of these commands have, at their core, the idea of files being a series of columns, separated by some character or position, and allow a person to select one or more specific columns upon which to perform functions. They represent, in a sense, shortcuts for various AWK scripts.


SS: 2003-12-16: Trying to improve over the Tcl implementation of wc in the Great Language Shootout I wrote this, that seems half in execution time against big files:

set text [read stdin]
set c [string length $text]
set l [expr {[llength [split $text "\n\r"]]-1}]
set T [split $text "\n\r\t "]
set w [expr {[llength $T]-[llength [lsearch -all -exact $T {}]]-1}]
puts "\t$l\t$w\t$c"

Output seems to be identical to GNU's wc command.


Laif: It should be noted by those who are not familiar with unix - that even in windows xp, if fileutil::find encounters a folder or file named with a single tilde (~), it will append the contents of the person's home directory to the search results. Furthermore, there is a risk of infinite recursion, if somewhere within your home folder, there is also a folder named with a single tilde.