fselect

Find files with SQL-like queries

Why use fselect?

While it doesn't tend to fully replace traditional find and ls, fselect has these nice features:

SQL-like (not real SQL, but highly relaxed!) grammar easily understandable by humans

complex queries

aggregate, statistics, date, and other functions

search within archives

.gitignore, .hgignore, and .dockerignore support (experimental)

search by width and height of images, EXIF metadata

search by MP3 info

search by extended file attributes

search by file hashes

search by MIME type

shortcuts to common file types

interactive mode

various output formatting (CSV, JSON, and others)

More is under way!

Installation

Latest release from source

Install Rust with Cargo and its dependencies to build a binary

Run cargo install fselect

Windows 64bit

A statically precompiled binary is available at Github downloads.

Windows from Chocolatey

Install Chocolatey

Run choco install fselect

Mac via Homebrew

Install brew

Run brew install fselect

Mac via MacPorts

Install MacPorts

Run:

sudo port selfupdate

sudo port install fselect

Usage

fselect [ARGS] COLUMN[, COLUMN...] [from ROOT[, ROOT...]] [where EXPR] [order by COLUMNS] [limit N] [into FORMAT]

Interactive mode

fselect -i

Documentation

More detailed description. Look at examples first.

Examples

Find temporary or config files (full path and size):

fselect size, path from /home/user where name = '*.cfg' or name = '*.tmp'

Windows users may omit the quotes:

fselect size, path from C:\Users\user where name = *.cfg or name = *.tmp

Or put all the arguments into the quotes like this:

fselect "name from /home/user/tmp where size > 0"

Find files (just names) with any content (size > 0):

fselect name from /home/user/tmp where size gt 0

Specify file size, get absolute path, and add it to the results:

cd /home/user

fselect size, abspath from ./tmp where size gt 2g

fselect fsize, abspath from ./tmp where size = 5m

fselect hsize, abspath from ./tmp where size lt 8k

More complex query:

fselect "name from /tmp where (name = *.tmp and size = 0) or (name = *.cfg and size > 1000000)"

Aggregate functions:

fselect "MIN(size), MAX(size), AVG(size), SUM(size), COUNT(*) from /home/user/Downloads"

Formatting functions:

fselect "LOWER(name), UPPER(name), LENGTH(name), YEAR(modified) from /home/user/Downloads"

Get the year of an oldest file:

fselect "MIN(YEAR(modified)) from /home/user"

Use single quotes if you need to address files with spaces:

fselect "path from '/home/user/Misc stuff' where name != 'Some file'"

Regular expressions of Rust flavor are supported:

fselect name from /home/user where path =~ '.*Rust.*'

Negate regular expressions:

fselect "name from . where path !=~ '^\./config'"

Simple globs expand automatically and work with = and != operators:

fselect name from /home/user where path = '*Rust*'

Classic LIKE:

fselect "path from /home/user where name like '%report-2018-__-__???'"

Exact match operators to search with regexps disabled:

fselect "path from /home/user where name === 'some_*_weird_*_name'"

Find files by date:

fselect path from /home/user where created = 2017-05-01

fselect path from /home/user where modified = today

fselect path from /home/user where accessed = yesterday

fselect "path from /home/user where modified = 'apr 1'"

fselect "path from /home/user where modified = 'last fri'"

Be more specific to match all files created at interval between 3PM and 4PM:

fselect path from /home/user where created = '2017-05-01 15'

And even more specific:

fselect path from /home/user where created = '2017-05-01 15:10'

fselect path from /home/user where created = '2017-05-01 15:10:30'

Date and time intervals possible (find everything updated since May 1st):

fselect path from /home/user where modified gte 2017-05-01

Default is current directory:

fselect path, size where name = '*.jpg'

Search within multiple locations:

fselect path from /home/user/oldstuff, /home/user/newstuff where name = '*.jpg'

With minimum and/or maximum depth specified (depth is a synonym for maxdepth):

fselect path from /home/user/oldstuff depth 5 where name = '*.jpg'

fselect path from /home/user/oldstuff mindepth 2 maxdepth 5, /home/user/newstuff depth 10 where name = '*.jpg'

Optionally follow symlinks:

fselect path, size from /home/user symlinks where name = '*.jpg'

Search within archives (currently only zip-archives are supported):

fselect path, size from /home/user archives where name = '*.jpg'

Or in combination:

fselect size, path from /home/user depth 5 archives symlinks where name = '*.jpg' limit 100

Enable .gitignore or .hgignore support:

fselect size, path from /home/user/projects gitignore where name = '*.cpp'

fselect size, path from /home/user/projects hgignore where name = '*.py'

Search by image dimensions:

fselect CONCAT(width, 'x', height), path from /home/user/photos where width gte 2000 or height gte 2000

Find square images:

fselect path from /home/user/Photos where width = height

Find old-school rap MP3 files:

fselect duration, path from /home/user/music where genre = Rap and bitrate = 320 and mp3_year lt 2000

Shortcuts to common file extensions:

fselect path from /home/user where is_archive = true

fselect path, mime from /home/user where is_audio = 1

fselect path, mime from /home/user where is_book != false

fselect path from /home/user where is_doc != 1

fselect path from /home/user where is_image = false

fselect path from /home/user where is_video != true

Find files with dangerous permissions:

fselect mode, path from /home/user where other_write = true or other_exec = true

fselect mode, path from /home/user where other_all = true

Simple glob-like expressions or even regular expressions on file mode are possible:

fselect mode, path from /home/user where mode = '*rwx'

fselect mode, path from /home/user where mode =~ '.*rwx$'

Find files by owner's uid or gid:

fselect uid, gid, path from /home/user where uid != 1000 or gid != 1000

Or by owner's or group's name:

fselect user, group, path from /home/user where user = mike or group = mike

Find special files:

fselect name from /usr/bin where suid = true

fselect path from /tmp where is_pipe = true

fselect path from /tmp where is_socket = 1

Find files with xattrs, check if particular xattr exists, or get its value:

fselect "path, has_xattrs, has_xattr(user.test), xattr(user.test) from /home/user"

Include arbitrary text as columns:

fselect "name, ' has size of ', size, ' bytes'"

Order results:

fselect path from /tmp order by size desc, name

fselect modified, fsize, path from ~ order by 1 desc, 3

Finally limit the results:

fselect name from /home/user/samples limit 5

Format output:

fselect size, path from /home/user limit 5 into json

fselect size, path from /home/user limit 5 into csv

fselect size, path from /home/user limit 5 into html

License

MIT/Apache-2.0

Supported by JetBrains IDEA open source license

fselectFind files with SQL-like queries