Summary

• Termsequel
  • What is
  • Dependencies
  • Goals
    • Personal
    • Project
  • Installation
• Users
  • Features
    • Columns
    • SELECT
    • WHERE
    • Variables
• Developers

Termsequel

Bringing SQL to our filesystem.

Open Source Project hosted on Github Site

• What is

  Termsequel, is an ideia that I have been thought a time ago(since, 2018 I guess), but, I had no ideia in how to implement it.

• Dependencies

  To execute the binary, you will need just one dependency! A implementation of the C++ standard library.
  Note: The implementation might be installed by default in your operating system. If you are on an embedded system, you may install it by yourself.

  If you want to compile, then, you will need a C++ compiler. I suggest clang!

  If you are running in Linux, you will need at the Kernel 4.11 to run Termsequel(because of the stax syscall).

• Goals

  What are my goals and Termsequel goals?

  • Personal

    For me, I always wanted to learn C++ and Compilers. Well, at least the concepts of both.
    And, I always wanted to have some project that really helps me on my daily routines, and Termsequel helps me. Because, it really helps me, I decided to make it open source, and try to help someone else(This is the objective of an Open Source Project, right? 😬 ).

    I have never learned the find command very well, and I believe that it has a lot of information and does a lot of things(but is very useful).

    I am not building Termsequel to be a replacement of find, not this, but, an alternative tool that is more user friendly for easy and basic tasks, like, search for a .exe file in a directory.

  • Project

    Termsequel aims to help programmers, system administrators, hackers and even, non technical people who likes to learn new things.
    Termsequel aims to be the most easy(this is why, SQL is chosen) to people. Plataform independent(work in progress), no external dependencies(yes, I could use the Boost) because, first of all, I want to learn, and, there is no need for an external library. This project is simple(yet).

• Installation

  You will need CMake and, one C++ compiler(clang, gcc, MSVC ...) to build the project!
  Just, create a directory called build and, then execute:

  $ cd build
  $ cmake ../
  $ cmake --build .

  Since, this project is easy for CMake, it can detect the operating system and the available compiler.

Users

Some advices to run Termsequel.
The system is not thread safe, because, there is no need to this. Well, at least for now.

You will need to provide the command in quotes or double quotes, otherwise, it will be different command line arguments.
Example: Running Termsequel

$ termsequel 'SELECT NAME FROM /HOME'

• Features

  Some features that are ready to be used. For now, just the SELECT command is available, but, I want to implement some DML commands.

  For now, you can not make joins, select from multiple tables, and, I am not sure if it will be implemented.

  • Columns

    The columns, is what you can obtain or use to filter.

    • NAME

      The name of the file.

    • SIZE

      The size in bytes of the file.

    • OWNER

      The owner of the file.

    • GROUP

      The group owner of the file.
      Obs: Only available for Linux.

    • LEVEL

      The depth level. Considering the from value as the relative path(if a directory).

    • FILE_TYPE

      The type of the file.

    • OWNER_PERMISSIONS

      Returns the permissions of the owner of the file.

    • GROUP_PERMISSIONS

      Returns the permissions of the group of the file.
      Obs: Only available for Linux.

    • OTHERS_PERMISSIONS

      Returns the permissions of other users.
      Obs: Only available for Linux.

    • SET_UID

      Returns SET if the setuid bit is setted. NSET otherwise.
      Obs: Only available for Linux.

    • SET_GID

      Returns SET if the setgid bit is setted. NSET otherwise.
      Obs: Only available for Linux.

    • LAST_MODIFICATION

      The datetime when the last modification ocurred.

    • STAR pseudo column

      Use this, when you want to select all the available columns ... For example:

      SELECT * FROM .

      Means, select "all" the columns from .
      Note: You can not use the star in the WHERE statement!

    • RELATIVE_PATH

      The relative path of the file.

    • ABSOLUTE_PATH

      The absolute path of the file.

    • CREATION_DATE

      The creation date of the file.

  • SELECT

    The same syntax as a SQL database.
    Termsequel SELECT syntax: SELECT COLUMN_LIST FROM FILE

    Example: "SELECT" syntax

    SELECT NAME FROM <FILE>    
    -- <FILE> is a placeholder. File can be a regular file, and a directory. Can even be pseudo directories
    SELECT NAME FROM . -- Current directory
    SELECT NAME FROM ../ -- Parent directory

    Example: Selecting names from user documents directory.

    SELECT NAME FROM /home/user/documents

  • WHERE

    Now, Termsequel supports WHERE filters!
    You can write filters like:

    SELECT NAME FROM . WHERE OWNER = myuser

    Even, you can group logical operators(for now, they are just left precedence!)

    SELECT NAME FROM . WHERE OWNER = myuser AND SIZE > 10

    The logical operators are: AND and OR.

    Example: Check if owner has execute permission in a file:

    SELECT NAME, OWNER_PERMISSIONS FROM . WHERE OWNER_PERMISSIONS CONTAINS X
    -- Returns the files that the owner has the execute flag set.
    SELECT NAME, OWNER_PERMISSIONS FROM . WHERE OWNER_PERMISSIONS CONTAINS R AND OWNER_PERMISSIONS CONTAINS X   
    -- Returns the files that the owner has the read and execute flag set.

    Note: If you write something like:

    SELECT NAME FROM . WHERE NAME ENDS_WITH .cpp AND SIZE > 1000  

    This means:

    Return the name of the files whose ends with .cpp and has more than 1000 bytes

    Now, if you write something like:

    SELECT NAME FROM . WHERE NAME ENDS_WITH .cpp AND SIZE > 1000 OR NAME ENDS_WITH .txt

    This means:

    Return the name of the files whose ends with .cpp and has the size greater than 1000 bytes or ends with .txt

    It is possible to negate operators too!
    Actually, we are not negating operators, Termsequel 1.1 introduced new operators(NOT_CONTAINS, NOT_STARTS_WITH and NOT_ENDS_WITH).
    For examples, you want to select all the files that do not end with .txt.

    SELECT NAME FROM . WHERE NAME NOT_ENDS_WITH .txt

  • Variables

    Now, it is possible to use your environment variables with Termsequel!

    For example, in bash, you can write:

    # This is the same to write: /home/my_user 
    $ termsequel 'SELECT NAME FROM $HOME WHERE NAME ENDS_WITH .c OR NAME ENDS_WITH .cpp'

    If you terminal support, you even use non environment variables:
    Example: Exporting a user defined shell variable(will live only in this shel session)

    $ export BOOKS=/home/sgtcortez/Documentos/Books/
    $ termsequel 'SELECT NAME, SIZE FROM $BOOKS'

    Note: You can only use this feature at the first part!
    For example, $HOME/$OTHER will be expanded to: /home/my_user/$OTHER.
    There are no plans to support more than one ...

    Note: The $ character must be the first source character! For example, Documents$HOME will not be expanded!

Developers

There are sections for developers to be able to join this project.

• Git Guidelines

  Feature branch must be created from the most stable branch(usually main), and, when done, should make a Pull Request to the development branch.
  The commits must be "squashed". The person who accepts the pull request, must, do a rebase to pick the single commit and put it on the target branch.

• Code Style

  We are using the LLVM coding style in our project.