Project logfind
Attempt your first project!
The projects in this book are designed to make you apply what you know so far to something "real world".
- I will tell you when to pause so you can try to solve it yourself.
- You will be given the challenge. Pause!
- You will be given clues. Pause!
- Finally the solution.
- Then I try to break my own solution.
If you ever get super stuck, you can visit:
https://github.com/zedshaw/learn-c-the-hard-way-lectures
To get all of the code for this book.
I want a tool called logfind that let's me search through log files for
text. This tool is a specialized version of another tool called grep, but
designed only for log files on a system.
- This tool takes any sequence of words and assumes I mean "and" for them. So
logfind zedshaw smart guywill find all files that havezedshawandsmartandguyin them. - It takes an optional argument of
-oif the parameters are meant to be or logic. - It loads the list of allowed log files from
~/.logfind.
- The list of file names can be anything that the
globfunction allows. Refer toman 3 globto see how this works. I suggest starting with just a flat list of exact files, and then addglobfunctionality. - You should output the matching lines as you scan, and try to match them as fast as possible.
Here is a demo of me using the one I wrote.
Now it's time for you to attempt to solve it from just this idea.
- Remember to solve it a piece at a time.
- Start with just getting the arguments.
- Then figure out how to open files and just open the ones in this directory.
- Then figure out how to read the files.
- Then find out how to find the arguments in the files.
- Then figure out how glob works.
- Then use glob to find the files and open them.
It helps to do each of these in main() then "carve" them out into their own functions.