crgrep: grep any resource

Ever wanted to grep a pattern in a PDF document? How about a database or the web? crgrep is a powerful grep-like utility written using JAVA that can do much more than just searching for patterns in text files. crgrep stands for Common Resource grep.

Resources crgrep supports:

• text documents, PDFs
• database tables
• ZIP, TAR, WAR, EAR and JAR archive formats
• image metadata (jpeg, gif etc.)
• text in scanned documents (jpeg/gif/tiff/bmp/png), extracted using OCR
• Maven POM files, following dependency trees of resource artifacts
• web resources
• combinations of supported resources

DOWNLOAD

crgrep is distributed as binary from its SourceForge project page. After extracting the archive, crgrep binary can be found in the bin directory.

USAGE

• Normal calling convention

  $ crgrep <pattern> <resource path(s)>

  Wildcards such as * and ? are supported in pattern or resource path(s). Output is displayed in the format:

  <resource>[[:pagenum]:linenum:matching_content]

  For example:

  Output                                Match
  ------------------------------------------------------------------
  src/foo.java                          File listing match
  src/bar.txt:25:some text              File content match (+lineno)
  lib/all.zip[image.gif]                Archive file listing match
  lib/app.war[WEB-INF/web.xml]:6:<d..>  Archive file content match
  pom.xml->stuff.zip[doc.txt]           File listing match
  mypic.jpg: @{Size=25,Com=Scene}       File meta-data match
  TAB: [COL1,COL2,COL3]                 Table column name match
  TAB: data1,data2,data3                Table data match
  Node[1]:{name:"John"}                 Graph database node match
  sample.pdf:1:1:Sample PDF Document    Text extracted from a PDF 
                                        (+pageno and +linenum)
  

• Find files and data matching key under target directory. Include archives.

  $ crgrep -r key target
  target/simple_file.txt: a key moment
  target/misc.zip[misc/nested_monkey.txt]
  target/monkey-pics.txt:1:A file about happy monkeys.
  target/test-ear.ear[META-INF/MANIFEST.MF]:5:Created-By: Apache monkey

• What column data in my database matches ‘handle’?
  (database username and password should be in ~/.crgrep)
  For relational DB:

  $ crgrep -d -U "jdbc:sqlite:/databases/db.sqlite3" handle '*'

  For Neo4J graph DB:

  $ crgrep -d -U "http://localhost:7474/" handle '*

  -d stands for database and -U for URI.

• Search pattern in an image using OCR:

  $ crgrep --ocr report report_scan.png

• Search in image metadata

  $ crgrep --ocr report report_scan.png

• Does the google home page contain a ‘favicon’ reference?

  $ crgrep google_favicon http://www.google.com

• Find maven (POM) dependencies in my project with content matching ‘RunWith’

  $ crgrep -m RunWith pom.xml

Webpage: Common Resource grep

Similar software

• ag or The Silver Searcher is a faster grep alternative for developers.