Where?

FYI, this project is listed as "retired." It may no longer function or I may just not be updating it anymore.

Helping your bash function forgetfulness

▶ Table of Contents

Description

For people who spread bash functions and aliases across multiple sourced files and then can’t track down where they defined them.

Installation

Place both _where.bash and common.bash in the same folder in your $PATH.

Option 1: Hook source

This option will hook the Bash default source command and index shell scripts whenenver they’re sourced from another file.

Add the following to your .bash_profile before any source commands are run:

export WHERE_HOOK_SOURCE=true
export WHERE_EXPIRATION=86400 # once a day
source /path/to/_where.bash
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If you choose this option, see Database refresh throttling below.

Option 2: Curated indexing

  1. Source _where.sh in your .bash_profile prior to sourcing other files

    source /path/to/_where.bash
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  2. Add the following to the bottom of specific files to be indexed:

    _where_from $BASH_SOURCE
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Indexing every file you source can slow down login, so option 2 may be ideal.

You can add the necessary line to every file in a folder and subfolders using the _where_add function:

$ _where_add ~/scripts{,/**}/*.{,ba}sh
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Remove the lines using the _where_clean function:

$ _where_clean ~/scripts{,/**}/*.{,ba}sh
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Usage

where [-kav] [function_name|search_pattern]
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Once the database is built, you can use the where command to find your functions. Running where with no arguments will output a list of all registered plugins and aliases.

Add an argument to filter for a specific function or alias. By default only exact matches will return. If an exact match is found, just the file path of the originating script will be returned.

Options

-k   Show all functions and aliases containing filter text
-a   Show all functions and aliases fuzzy matched
-v   Verbose output
-n   Suppress line number in paths
-E   Edit result
-h   Show this screen
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The -k switch turns on “apropos” mode, which lets you find any function containing the filter string in its name.

The -a switch takes “apropos” a step further, using the filter argument as a fuzzy search string. It will match any functions/arguments containing the characters in the search string in sequence, but they do not need to be contiguous.

If -a is specified, -k is ignored in the arguments.

-E causes $EDITOR to be opened with the path to the file containing the searched function. -E does not work with -k or -a.

-v will display a little more information in the output–such as command type–when used without -k or -a.

$ where git
/Users/ttscoff/.bash_it/aliases/custom.aliases.bash:69
$ where -v git
alias git is defined in /Users/ttscoff/.bash_it/aliases/custom.aliases.bash on line 69
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Aliases

  • where? is equivalent to where -k
  • where* is equivalent to where -a

Configuration

Database location

You can customize the location of the text file where uses with the environment variable WHERE_FUNCTIONS_FROM_DB. Set it before sourcing the script in ~/.bash_profile:

export WHERE_FUNCTIONS_FROM_DB=/new/path/filename
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Source hook

To enable where to automatically index any file sourced in your configuration, set the WHERE_HOOK_SOURCE variable to true before sourcing _where.bash in ~/.bash_profile:

export WHERE_HOOK_SOURCE=true
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Database refresh throttling

Set an expiration threshold on the database with WHERE_EXPIRATION. The threshold is in seconds, where one hour is 3600, and one day is 86400 (60 * 60 * 24). If where is initialized within the threshold since last update, it won’t index the files again.

export WHERE_EXPIRATION=3600
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You can force a database refresh with _where_reset on the command line. This will clear your database and set an update marker for the current time.

License

Brett Terpstra 2015, WTF license.

Download

Get where on GitHub.

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