The Molybdenum Replacer

Recursive, line-based search and replace CLI application.

Installation

Directly via cargo

• Install rust, this should also install cargo
• Run cargo install molybdenum
• Verify success: mo -h should print its help and version

From source code

• Install rust, this should also install cargo
• Clone the repo: git clone https://github.com/gfannes/molybdenum
• Build and install the app: cargo install --path molybdenum
• Verify success: mo -h should print its help and version

Basic usage

Following commands demonstrate how mo can be used to accomplish different tasks:

• Create list of filenames, only filtering against the pathname itself:
  • mo: When no search pattern is specified, only the filenames are listed
  • mo -l: Explicitly ask to output only the filenames
  • mo -C FOLDER: Use FOLDER as root for searching
  • mo -e hpp -e cpp: Only take files with hpp and cpp extension into account
  • mo -f PART: Keep filenames that match against PART
  • mo -F PART: Keep filenames that do not match against PART
  • mo -0: Use 0x00 to separate filenames. This is handy when using the output with xargs.
  • mo -u -U -a: Take hidden files, folders and binary files into account as well
• Search for a given regex pattern:
  • mo PATTERN: Search for PATTERN in files recursively
  • mo -p PATTERN: Search for PATTERN in files recursively
  • mo -w PATTERN: Search for PATTERN in files recursively, adding word-boundary constraints arround PATTERN
  • mo -s PATTERN: Search for PATTERN, case-sensitive
  • mo -B 10 -A 10 PATTERN: Output a context of 10 additional lines before and after each match
• Replace matches with a given STRING:
  • mo needle -w -r naald -n: Simulate the replacement of the the word needle with the Dutch word naald
  • mo needle -w -r naald: Really replace the word needle with the Dutch word naald
• Combining with xargs
  • mo -l -C FOLDER -0 | xargs -0 -r mo -i PATTERN: Note the -i option to ensure mo will search in files and not Stdin. In addition, the xargs -r option should be set to ensure nothing will run if no filepaths are produced.

Next to this, mo detects if input comes from a console or redirection, and will act accordingly, as well as for its output: mo can be used to report or make replacements in a piped stream as well.

Interactive file selection

Following bash functions allows you to open a file (o) or change to a folder (c) based on the fuzzy search functionality of fzf. You can pass them any argument that mo accepts, making them handy interactive tools. They rely on bat to provide a preview, and nvr to open the selected file in a new or already running instance of neovim, and zoxide to register and track your most popular folders.

# Open file using `bat` as preview
o() {
    mo -l $* | fzf --multi --preview 'bat --style=numbers --color=always --line-range :500 {}' --preview-window 'right:60%' | xargs -I % nvr --remote-tab %
}

# Open file using `mo` as preview
s() {
    export all_args="$*"
    mo -l $* | fzf --multi --preview 'mo -c -i ${all_args} -C {}' --preview-window 'right:60%' | xargs -I % nvr --remote-tab %
}

# Change to dir using `z`
c() {
    z `mo -L $* | fzf`
}

Yet another tool?

Powerful search can be found without problems, eg, grep, ack, ag, ripgrep or broot.

Tools for replacing recursively in a folder are more difficult to find, although some exist: fart-it. Typically, people use a combination of searching, xargs and a replacement tool like sed or rpl.

I use code searching a lot to investigate a large source code base before attempting a replace. Even with 100k files, search is fast and fairly easy. Recursively replacing text is much more dangerous, especially if it requires the combination of several less frequently used tools; it's difficult to remember a search-xargs-replace combination if not used on a daily basis. On top of this, the search tool used to filter the set of files and perform a dry-run, is not per-se using the same search query as the replace tool. After all, these are different tools. It would be better if a single tool could be used for every-day searching and replacing. This is exactly what The Molybdenum Replacer intends to achieve.

In addition, I find it difficult to use ag and rg to filter against the file path and search for content in the remaining files; the -g option for ag and rg is confusing in my opinion. As such, I would expect ag -g /auro/ -w test to search for the word test in all files that have /auro/ in their path, but that is not what actually happens. It filters with /auro/ and test against the filename (or something that looks like it).

The real reason, of course, is that I had some free time and was looking for a nice project/excuse to learn rust.

Implemented Features

Following features are implemented and usable in the current version:

• Recursive search in a nested folder structure, line-based
  • Fast enough to make it usable. My impression is that it's performance is between ag and ripgrep.
  • Output clear enough for a human to understand when output is a console
• Recursive replacement in a nested folder structure
• Search and replacement from an input stream
  • Output all input when output is redirected
• Support for non-UTF8 filename and content
• Crude detection of binary files
• Flexible specification of search root and pattern
  • Allow search root(s) on top of pattern
  • Allow dashed options after the search root and pattern
• Improved xargs integration
  • Support searching a single file when specified as root
  • Support for overriding the auto-detected stdin-redirection/tty-console detection
• Support for multiple search roots
• Support for filtering against .gitignore files
• Support for listing folder names using the -L option

Future Features

Following features might be added sooner or later:

• Do not accept PATTERN and PATH with a leading -
• Do not fail when some folders have insufficient permissions
• By default, do not replace: invert interpretation fo -n (and use a different name)
• Support for arguments without a shorthand notation
• Support for displaying a content with a single argument, preferably -c
• Support for file type sets
• Allow zero-argument options to be merged: mo -ws test
• Allow input separator to be set explicitly. Now, this is hardcoded 0x0a.
• Improved performance
  • mo is currently single-threaded. To achieve ripgrep-like performance, all CPU's are probably required.
  • When -l is used to only output filenames, mo can stop searching after the first match.
• Report a single line per match when redirected output is detected
  • Allows for counting matches with wc
• Support for omitting the line number of a match
• Support for inverting the matches per line
• Use a better name, I just picked something that was still available.
  • Nobody can remember molybdenum, and it is very hard to type. mo is better, but difficult to search on the internet.
• Better detection of binary files
• Rollback when writing replacement file fails
• Improved testing
  • More and better unit tests
  • Acceptance tests for all common use cases
  • Performance tests and some reporting around this
• Binary releases on github
• Improved color scheme for people using a light background theme
• Add changelog for versions before v0.1.6.

Performance

Count all files in a folder

Scenario: count all files
  Running `mo -l -u -U -a | wc`
    Elapsed time: 0:00.29
    Output:  184675  187146 16959297

  Running `rg --files -uu -a | wc`
    Elapsed time: 0:00.15
    Output:  184675  187146 16589947

  Running `ag -l -uu -a | wc`
    Elapsed time: 0:00.66
    Output:  184675  187146 16589947

Search for word in C++ source code

Scenario: search for word `test` in .cpp files in subfolder `core` where path contains /auro/
  Running `mo -C core -e cpp -f /auro/ -w -p test -l | wc`
    Elapsed time: 0:00.03
    Output:     165     165    9008

  Running `rg -t cpp --files core | rg /auro/ | rg '.cpp$' | tr '\n' '\0' | xargs -0 rg -i -w test -l | wc`
    Elapsed time: 0:00.01
    Output:     165     165    9008

  Running `ag --cpp -l . core | ag /auro/ | ag '.cpp$' | tr '\n' '\0' | xargs -0 ag -w test -l | wc`
    Elapsed time: 0:00.05
    Output:     165     165    9008

I don't know how I can accomplish this scenario with ag and rg in a single command without relying on xargs and tr.

Changelog

v0.1.6

• When stdout is non-TTY, a more compact and useful output format is used
• Added .out extension to the list of binary files

v0.1.7

• Filename pattern matching with -f and -F is now case-sensitive only when -s is set
• Added primitive method to only output the matches via -m. This should be replaced with proper Regex submatch support.

v0.1.8

• Support for working with capture groups. When -P % is specified, the replacement string specified via -r will substitute capture groups for all occurences of % or %[0-9].
• Support for compact output.
• Rework of colored output: when not specified, the output stream is checked. If this is a TTY, no color output will be produced.

v0.1.9

• When the search pattern is specified multiple time, the last one is actually used. This allows for a better integration with scripting where a default pattern is specified and might be updated later.