ret 0.1.1

A pure-python command-line regular expression tool for stream filtering, extracting, and parsing.

A pure-python command-line regular expression tool for stream filtering, extracting, and parsing, designed to be minimal with an intuitive command-line interface.

Installation

You can install this via

python3 -m pip install ret
✨🍰✨

or using pipx

pipx install ret
✨🍰✨

Ret is pure python (3.6+) with no dependencies.

Usage

Example

You can use Ret to extract text via regex capture groups:

$ git branch
* master
$ git branch | ret "\* (\w+)" --group 1
master

…finding all occurrences of a pattern:

$ ls | ret ".*\.py" findall
foo.py
bar.py

and even all occurrences of a pattern with capture groups:

$ ls | ret "(.*)\.py" findall --group 1
foo
bar

and much much more.

Background

I love grep. But grep isn’t really for text extraction.

For example, you cannot extract regexes via capture groups.

Since I wanted that functionality, I decided to build this, Ret.

Why the name?

Ret is an acronym for regular expression ttool.

Why it can’t replace grep (yet)

Ret originally was designed to provide some features grep lacks. It never intended to replace good ol’ grep.

Grep is great for searching directories while ret (currently) can only read from a file or stdin.

Furthermore, you cannot guarantee that ret is installed on the machine.

Also, Ret relies on the (slow) python regex engine.

Feel free to contribute!