epubgrep(1) Manual Page

NAME

epubgrep - Search tool for EPUB e-books.

SYNOPSIS

epubgrep [OPTION]… PATTERN [FILE]…

DESCRIPTION

epubgrep searches EPUB files in a similar way as grep. It uses the same names for command line switches where possible. However, not all grep switches are implemented and some additional switches are added.

OPTIONS

-h, --help: Display a short help message and exit.
V, --version: Show version, copyright and license.
-G, --basic-regexp: PATTERN is a POSIX basic regular expression. This is the default.
-E, --extended-regexp: PATTERN is a POSIX extended regular expression.
--grep: In combination with --basic-regexp or --extended-regexp, PATTERN is treated as a newline separated list of expressions, a match is found if any of the expressions in the list match.
-P, --perl-regexp: PATTERN is a Perl regular expression.
-i, --ignore-case: Ignore case distinctions in pattern and data.
-e PATTERN, --regexp PATTERN: Use additional PATTERN for matching. Can be used more than once.
-a, --raw: Do not clean up text before searching. No HTML stripping, no newline removal, all files will be read (not just the text documents listed in the spine).
-C NUMBER, context NUMBER: Print NUMBER words of context around matches.
--nocolor: Turn off colors and other decorations.
--no-filename WHICH: Suppress the mentioning of file names on output. WHICH is ‘filesystem’ for the file names on your file systems, ‘in-epub’ for the file names inside the EPUB or ‘all’. Chapters and page numbers will still be output.
-r, --recursive: Read all files under each directory, recursively, following symbolic links only if they are on the command line. Silently skips directories that are not readable by the user.
-R, --dereference-recursive: Read all files under each directory, recursively. Follow all symbolic links. Silently skips directories that are not readable by the user.
--ignore-archive-errors: Ignore errors about wrong file formats. When you search directories recursively, it is likely that there are files which are not EPUB files. This setting suppresses errors related to them.

USAGE

$ epubgrep -i makhno -C 4 The_Bolshevik_Myth.epub
OPS/piece000038.xhtml, Chapter 33. Dark People, page 141: in the campaign against Makhno, and they were exchanging

The output is <file path in epub>, <last headline>, <page number>: <context before><match><context after>. <last headline> and <page number> may not be available.

Differences to grep

epubgrep does not operate on lines, but on whole files. All newlines will be replaced by spaces (multiple newlines will be condensed into one space) and HTML will be stripped. This means you can search for text spanning multiple lines and don’t have to worry about HTML tags in the text. Use --raw if you want to search in the raw files instead.

Configuration

Every command line switch can be used as an option in the configuration file. If the switch has no value (it is a simple on switch), it has to be written as option = 1. Do not use quotation marks around the values, they will be taken literally.

Command line options overwrite configuration file options. Options that can occur more than once are merged.

Example configuration file

This example makes epubgrep ignore files which are not EPUB, suppress the file names on output, print 2 words of context around matches (unless overridden on the command line) and search for mentions of the words thyme and oregano in every book.

ignore-archive-errors = 1
no-filename = 1
context = 2
regexp = [Tt]hyme
regexp = [Oo]regano

FILES

Configuration file

If XDG_CONFIG_HOME is defined: ${XDG_CONFIG_HOME}/epubgrep/epubgrep.conf
If HOME is defined: ${HOME}/.config/epubgrep/epubgrep.conf
Otherwise: epubgrep.conf

Log file

If XDG_STATE_HOME is defined: ${XDG_STATE_HOME}/epubgrep/epubgrep.log
If HOME is defined: ${HOME}/.local/state/epubgrep/epubgrep.log
Otherwise: epubgrep.log

KNOWN BUGS

EPUB files with non-ASCII file names only work reliably when the system locale uses an encoding which has the necessary characters. Technically EPUBs must use UTF-8 for file names but it is usually recommended to only use ASCII (ASCII is valid UTF-8). If your system locale is not UTF-8, files may be silently skipped. You can work around this by calling epubgrep like this: LC_ALL="C.UTF-8" epubgrep

REPORTING BUGS

Bugtracker: https://schlomp.space/tastytea/epubgrep/issues

E-mail: tastytea@tastytea.de

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