fpath

Reformat and stylize file path like text output.

• Author: Tuncay D.
• Source: Github
• License: MIT License

Introduction

Convenience script to style and reformat output from a list of file path like data. Transform output from ls, find or any other file listing into a new structure or just add colors. Operates mostly on text based data, but has special options and commands to access file system for additional information.

Installation

This is a Python script. It is written for Linux, has no external library dependency, but rely on a standard Linux program called file for very few operations. Just download the script and give it the executable bit and put it into a directory where your executable files are located.

git clone https://github.com/thingsiplay/fpath
cd fpath
chmod +x fpath

Usage

paths... | fpath [options] [--] [path...]

\ls -1 | fpath

fpath *.txt

By default stdin is parsed as a list of paths split by newline character. Additionally paths can be given as arguments too. All input paths are output back to stdout. Without any options, following operations are done automatically:

• remove surrounding quotes '' and double quotes "" (see global option -q and -Q)
• remove leading ./ for relative paths (see global option -d)
• remove trailing /
• expand leading ~ to users home directory path (see global option -t)
• print path to stdout (see global option -F)

The stdin can be ignored with option -z. Double dash -- tells the script to stop looking for options that start with a dash (such as -t) and treat everything after it as an input path instead. List all available global options with -h or --help .

Colorize the path separator

Option -s for short or --sep-style will change the look of the path separator, which is the slash / by default. Use option --explain style to list available colors and effects.

fpath --explain style

fpath -s red

Advanced formatting

Option -F for short or --format controls look and structure of output entirely. Using this option, by default nothing is output unless you tell it with specific control sequences. These control sequences (also sometimes called commands) have to be enclosed between curly braces { and } to be recognized and will be replaced with their evaluated content. Use option --explain fmt to list available control sequences.

fpath --explain fmt

fpath -F {path}

Note: Advanced formatting with -F also supports styles, but they have to be put in curly braces too here. Also style commands can have an end tag to specify what portion should be affected, in example {red}some text{/color} .

Documentation

For more in depth explanation, have a look at the docs:

• Literals: A list of escape sequences, that are translated into a specific character or control sequence for the terminal.
• Styles: List of available style commands.
• Fmt: List of available format commands.

And there is a step by step tutorial going through some commands and showing their output:

• Tutorial: Starts off with basic command usage and gradually gets more advanced.