niczsoft

Ever used grep and wanted to check that file with less? Now it is easy with wrapping functions, they parse grep outputted lines.

So lets say we search for info in rvm packages:

grep -rn '__rvm_use(' ~/.rvm/scripts
/home/mpapis/.rvm/scripts/selector:391:__rvm_use()

So now you want to see what is inside of ‘.rvm/scripts/selector’ at line 391

less -N +j391 /home/mpapis/.rvm/scripts/selector

But wouldn’t be nice to just write less, double click the found line and middle click:

less /home/mpapis/.rvm/scripts/selector:391:__rvm_use

This will work when using following function:

less()
{
  local params=() param parsed
  for param in "$@"
  do
    case $param in
    (*:*)
      parsed=( ${param//:/ } )
      params+=( "-N" "+j${parsed[1]}" "${parsed[0]}" )
      ;;
    (*)
      params+=( "$param" )
      ;;
    esac
  done
  command less "${params[@]}"
}

Put the above code into ~/.functions and source it in ~/.bashrc

test -s ~/.functions && . ~/.functions || true

Now restart your shell and enjoy you extended less function.