CeeFind - smart, all in one find tool with simple index

Principles:

1. Look in familiar places. If you lost something before, it's likely to be where you found it last time
2. Look in similar places. If you lost something in another house, it's likely to be in a similar place in that house
3. If a place looks similar, maybe it is. If you lost something in a building that looks like a house, act as if it were a house
4. Don't remember everything.

Usable:

• Simple shortcuts f and c:
  • f is search
  • c is GO TO
• Actually useful verbose mode so you know what's going on:
  • Time estimates
  • Progress information / summary statistics
• Works in Cmdshell and Powershell

Smart:

• Searches nearby previous results before searching everywhere
• Matches similar directory patterns across multiple root paths
• Minimally indexes in a single file for quick scans

Installation

1. Build .sln Release x64 in VS2022
2. Add release bin directory to path environment variable

Usage

Examples

Find files:

f [file filter...]

f *.java

f .*Aggregation.cs

f [a-z]+[0-9].cs

Note: the file filter is a regular expression, but *. when not in the form to .*. is converted to .* to allow for filters like *.cpp. Then, anchors are added at each end to make the regular expression ^.*\.cpp$. To disable this assistance use the flag -r or -regex.

Find in files:

f [file filter] [inside file filter] ...

f *.java override

f *.java override sql color

Find filenames with crlf line endings: f * \r\n -ignorenewlines -files

Find in file filter is always a regular expression.

Find in multiple types of file filters

f [file filter]... not [negative file filter]... -- [inside file filter]...

f *.java *.cs --

f *.java *.cs -- override

f *.java *.cs not *test* -- override

Go to file:

c [args]

c *.csproj

c *.csproj nuget

Verbose Flag

It's highly recommended you use the -verbose or -v flag as it provides detailed output of search progress which is invaluable if you have very large count of files.

This includes:

• File read count
• Progress %, ETA (when statistics are available)
• Summary of requested search
• Top file types skipped (binary and suspected binary)
• Top file extensions scanned

Flags

Flag	Description
-b -binary	Include binary files, include large files (files over 1mb)
-v -verbose	Show progress and other diagnostic information
-h -history	Show previous searches executed from the current directory
-dir -dir -dirs	Show only directories containing results, no file names or file lines
-f -first	Output only the first result. The command c uses -first -dir
-file -files	Show only filenames, not directories or file lines
-json	Dump the current index out as state.json
-r -regex	Use pure regular expressions, no conversion
-n -ignorenewlines	Read entire files, including newlines