a useful grep command

[Skaperen]

i would like to see a grep command that can search python source files and limit the search to just the specified part of the source, ignoring these parts when not selected:

1. comments

2. string literals

3. bytes literals

4. code

[Larz60+]

try using sed
see: https://linuxcommando.blogspot.com/2008/...-file.html

[Gribouillis]

that can search python source files and limit the search to just the specified part of the source,

Using python's tokener, it is pretty easy to rewrite a python file by removing a subset of these categories. For example you could replace these tokens by white space, then search with regex in the remaining part. There are pure python grep packages such as 'grin', probably others in pypi.

[Skaperen]

try using sed
see: https://linuxcommando.blogspot.com/2008/...-file.html

the idea is to lex or parse the file enough to distinguish parts like string literals, comments, and code and apply the search to the specified parts. so if i specify to search code and literals, it won't search the comments (even within the same line). sed does not have any capability to understand python source.