The Linux and Unix Menagerie: Shell Script To Fake Linux Locate On Solaris

Hey There,

For this lazy weekend, I thought I'd put together a little shell script to address an issue I run into commonly enough.

If you've used RedHat Linux (or pretty much any Linux distro nowadays), you may have come to enjoy the convenience of the "locate" and "slocate" commands. Basically, all the command really does, in one mode, is create a database of every directory and file on a system (dated right then and there) and, in the most common usage mode, search that database file.

Adhering to these basic concepts, I wrote up a quick script to kind-of do the same thing on Solaris (As per above, this should work on pretty much any Unix system, as well).

Basically, you'll invoke it once to create file and directory databases (using simple find and ls commands), and run the generated scripts to search those text databases. This script has only 3 options:

f - to make a file-listing text database and create a built in script to emulate searching for files.
d - to make a directory-listing text database and create a built in script to emulate searching for directories.
nodat - to not create the additional tree.dat file that is only a directory database; no built-in script.

Depending upon what you want, if you were to run:

host # ./gfind f d nodat

you'd end up with two files, which you could invoke like this:

host # ./filefind FILENAME
host # ./treefind FILENAME

and these two commands would list out all the files matching your query (grep is used under the covers so you can use shortened versions of your desired search string to get back more results. It works just like locate/slocate in that when you run it (just like updatedb for locate/slocate), the results you get are what was on the system at the time you ran it.

If you opt to not include the "nodat" argument on your command line (only valid with the "d" option), the script will also create a totally separate directory database that you can run whatever crazy grep-like commands you want to against it.

Hope it helps you out to a good degree :)

Cheers,

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License

#!/bin/ksh
#
# gfind - file and directory search program producer and
# directory tree mapper
#
# 2008 - Mike Golvach - eggi@comcast.net
#
# Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License
#

trap 'echo "";echo "Cleaning up and bailing out!!!";rm -f treefind filefind tree.dat johno tempmap maptemp newmap oldmap;exit' 1 2 3 15

rm -f treefind filefind tree.dat johno tempmap maptemp newmap oldmap

function make_treeexec
{
    print "#!/bin/ksh" >> treefind
    print "" >> treefind
    print "for x" >> treefind
    print "do" >> treefind
    print "grep \$x treefind" >> treefind
    print "done" >> treefind
    print "exit" >> treefind
    print "" >> treefind
    chmod 777 treefind
}

function make_fileexec
{
    print "#!/bin/ksh" >> filefind
    print "" >> filefind
    print "for x" >> filefind
    print "do" >> filefind
    print "grep \$x filefind" >> filefind
    print "done" >> filefind
    print "exit" >> filefind
    print "" >> filefind
    chmod 777 filefind
}

function make_filefind
{
    find / -print -depth 2>/dev/null >> johno
    sed '/^\proc/d' johno >> filefind
    rm johno
}

function make_treefind
{
    ls -R / 2>/dev/null >> tempmap
    sed -n '/\//p' tempmap >> maptemp
    sed -e '/^\/dos/d' -e '/^\/proc/d' maptemp >> treefind
    rm tempmap 
}

function make_dirtree
{
    awk '{if ($0 ~ /^\/[^\/]*\/[^\/]*$/)
            {print "        "$0}
        else if ($0 ~ /^\/[^\/]*\/[^\/]*\/[^\/]*$/)
            {print "                "$0}
        else if ($0 ~ /^\/[^\/]*\/[^\/]*\/[^\/]*\/[^\/]*$/)
            {print "                        "$0}
        else if ($0 ~ /^\/[^\/]*\/[^\/]*\/[^\/]*\/[^\/]*\/[^\/]*$/)
            {print "                                "$0}
        else if ($0 ~ /^\/[^\/]*$/)
            {print $0}
        else
        {print "                                        "$0}
    }' maptemp >> newmap
    sed 's/^        \/[^\/]*/       /' newmap >> oldmap
    sed 's/^                \/[^\/]*\/[^\/]*/               /' oldmap > newmap
    sed 's/^                        \/[^\/]*\/[^\/]*\/[^\/]*/                       /' newmap > oldmap
    sed 's/^                                \/[^\/]*\/[^\/]*\/[^\/]*\/[^\/]*/                               /' oldmap > newmap
    sed 's/^                                        \/[^\/]*\/[^\/]*\/[^\/]*\/[^\/]*\/[^\/]*/                                       /' newmap > oldmap
    rm maptemp newmap
    mv oldmap tree.dat
}

if [ $# -lt 1 ] || [ $# -gt 3 ]
then
    echo "Must specify at least one option!!!!"
    echo ".. and no more than three..."
    echo "Usage: gfind ( d ) ( f ) ( nodat )"
    echo "Option \"nodat\" only valid with \"d\""
    exit 1
fi
if [ $# -eq 3 ]
then
    if [[ $1 = d && $2 = f && $3 = nodat ]] || [[ $1 = f && $2 = d && $3 = nodat ]] || [[ $1 = d && $2 = nodat && $3 = f ]] || [[ $1 = f && $2 = nodat && $3 = d ]] || [[ $1 = nodat && $2 = d && $3 = f ]] || [[ $1 = nodat && $2 = f && $3 = d ]]
    then
        make_fileexec
        make_filefind
        make_treeexec
        make_treefind
        rm -f maptemp
        echo "File \"treefind\" created successfully!"
        echo "File \"filefind\" created successfully!"
        exit
    else
        echo "Hmm... Something wasn't right there"
        echo "Your only options are \"d\" \"f\" or"
        echo "\"nodat\", which is only good with \"d\""
        exit 1
    fi
fi
if [ $# -eq 2 ]
then
    if [[ $1 = d && $2 = f ]] || [[ $1 = f && $2 = d ]]
    then
        make_fileexec
        make_filefind
        make_treeexec
        make_treefind
        make_dirtree
        echo "File \"treefind\" created successfully!"
        echo "File \"filefind\" created successfully!"
        echo "File \"tree.dat\" created successfully!"
        exit
    elif [[ $1 = d && $2 = nodat ]] || [[ $1 = nodat && $2 = d ]]
    then
        make_treeexec
        make_treefind
        rm -f maptemp
        echo "File \"treefind\" created successfully!"
        exit
    else
        echo "Ooops, you can only possibly combine"
        echo "\"d\" and \"f\" or \"d\" and \"nodat\""
        echo "with only two options taken!!!"
        exit 1
    fi
fi
if [ $# -eq 1 ]
then
    if [[ $1 = d ]]
    then
        make_treeexec
        make_treefind
        make_dirtree
        echo "File \"treefind\" created successfully!"
        echo "File \"tree.dat\" created successfully!"
        exit
    elif [[ $1 = f ]]
    then
        make_fileexec
        make_filefind
        echo "File \"filefind\" created successfully!"
        exit
    elif [[ $1 = nodat ]]
    then
        echo "Option \"nodat\" only works with option \"d\"!"
        exit 1
    else
        echo "I Don't know that option!!! Try \"d\" or \"f\""
        exit 1
    fi
fi