Exercise 26: Project logfind

This is a small project for you to attempt on your own. To be effective at C, you'll need to learn to apply what you know to problems. In this exercise, I describe a tool I want you to implement, and in a vague way on purpose. This is done so you try to implement whatever you can, however you can. When you're done, you can then watch a video for the exercise that shows you how I did it, and then you can get the code and compare it to yours.

Think of this project as a real world puzzle that you might have to solve.

The logfind Specification

I want a tool called logfind that let's me search through log files for text. This tool is a specialized version of another tool called grep, but designed only for log files on a system. The idea is that I can type:

logfind zedshaw

And, it will search all the common places that log files are stored, and print out every file that has the word "zedshaw" in it.

The logfind tool should have these basic features:

• This tool takes any sequence of words and assumes I mean "and" for them. So logfind zedshaw smart guy will find all files that have zedshaw and smart and guy in them.

• It takes an optional argument of -o if the parameters are meant to be or logic.

• It loads the list of allowed log files from ~/.logfind.

• The list of file names can be anything that the glob function allows. Refer to man 3 glob to see how this works. I suggest starting with just a flat list of exact files, and then add glob functionality.

• You should output the matching lines as you scan, and try to match them as fast as possible.

That's the entire description. Remember that this may be very hard, so take it a tiny bit at a time. Write some code, test it, write more, test that, and so on in little chunks until you have it working. Start with the simplest thing that gets it working, and then slowly add to it and refine it until every feature is done.