_man - fast searching for glob patterns

_man - fast searching for glob patterns

[Andrej Borsenkow]

Our system (descendant of Pyramid DC/OSx) has an unusual man system. The man
directory is assumed to have mandb file with format

man_page section path_to_file ...

("normal" man pages are supported as well - with caveat, that if the system
finds mandb man page it never searches for normal one).

Well, it is trivial to look for mandb file ... unfortunately, the number of
manual pages is about 4000 - so, the simple

while read manpage dummy
  if [[ $manpage == $our-search-pattern ]]
   ...
done < $mandb-file

needs a considerable amount of time (10-15 seconds here). Globbing is hard to
use, because path_to_file may be *anything* - so, file names are not always
valid manpage names. And directory structure under man dir may be of any depth
as well - so, recursive globbing is needed and it takes some time as well.

Any idea?

TIA

/andrej

Re: _man - fast searching for glob patterns

[Zefram]

Andrej Borsenkow wrote:
>Well, it is trivial to look for mandb file ... unfortunately, the number of
>manual pages is about 4000

Better read the index file once, and cache it in an associative array.

-zefram

Re: _man - fast searching for glob patterns

[Bart Schaefer]

On Sep 27,  9:08pm, Andrej Borsenkow wrote:
} Subject: _man - fast searching for glob patterns
}
} while read manpage dummy
}   if [[ $manpage == $our-search-pattern ]]
}    ...
} done < $mandb-file
} 
} needs a considerable amount of time (10-15 seconds here).

On Sep 27,  6:17pm, Zefram wrote:
} Subject: Re: _man - fast searching for glob patterns
}
} Better read the index file once, and cache it in an associative array.

Check out the "mapfile" module.

zmodload mapfile
if [[ -f /usr/man/mandb ]]
then
  allpages=(${"${(f)mapfile[/usr/man/mandb]}"%% *})
  firstmatchingpage=$allpages[(r)$our-search-pattern]
  # ... etc. ...
fi

-- 
Bart Schaefer                                 Brass Lantern Enterprises
http://www.well.com/user/barts              http://www.brasslantern.com

RE: _man - fast searching for glob patterns

[Andrej Borsenkow]

>   firstmatchingpage=$allpages[(r)$our-search-pattern]

Thank you. This is a bit faster

rep[$#rep+1]=(${(M)allpages:#${~approx}$PREFIX${~star}$SUFFIX})

it gets all matching elements and assigns them to result. The speed is
acceptable (I suppose, globbing would take the same time).

BTW I wonder, if

array[$#array+1]=(...)

is much better than

array=($array ...)

??

cheers

/andrej