( this repository now lives at https://gitlab.com/alexandre1985/browser-search-cli/ )

Search

This is a (very powerful) BASH script for doing searches on the internet browser of your choice, through the command line or terminal.

Why?

Because usage of my computer usage productivity. This is something I want to improve.
But it didn't take long to do a script that would suit any power user (Yes, being a power user is good).

Dependencies

• Internet Browser (by default the BROWSER_COMMAND is set to xdg-open, which in Linux makes a call to system's default internet browser)

The rest of the dependencies you may already have on your Linux OS, which are:

• mkdir

• sed

• basename

• grep

• the rest are built-in bash shell commands such as echo, exit, return, test/[, printf, local, eval, declare, export and control flow bash constructs (if, then. else, fi, ... - well check the damn source code if you want to know more 😄 ! 🌄 )

Installation

Easy way

Open a terminal window (optionally cd to a $PATH directory) and do:

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/alexandre1985/commandline-search-browser/master/search && chmod +x search

Complete explanation

Just download the search script. You may want to put the script in a $PATH directory (for running search without needing search's full path for its execution).

After you have made the download, don't forget to give search executable permissions. You can give those by using the command chmod +x search.

Usage

search [search engine alias] any search term

example:

search why my desire of freedom has not reach your knowledge?

will do a "why my desire of freedom has not reach your knowledge?" internet search on the alias default search engine.

While:

search google why my desire of freedom has not reach your knowledge?

will do a "why my desire of freedom has not reach your knowledge?" internet search on the search engine URL of the google alias.

As you may see on the configuration file (var-and-aliases.conf) the alias google points to the alias g, which in turn has a search engine URL. So, in this case, the search URL the script will use will be the URL of the g alias.

Configurations

Configuration Directory

If we have XDG_CONFIG_HOME variable set, $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/commandline-search-browser/ will be the configuration directory. Or else will be $HOME/.config/commandline-search-browser/.

Configuration File

There is one configuration file for this script, that live inside the Configuration Directory (which the path probably is $HOME/.config/commandline-search-browser/). It's name is var-and-aliases.conf.

var-and-aliases.conf

Running the script (search) for the first time, automatically generates this configuration file.
If search is not working, you may change some variables of var-and-aliases.conf to match your OS.
It is somewhat well documented. You can change and configure it easily.

var-and-aliases.conf has search engine aliases for your search script usage. If the script detects no alias, it will use the default alias.

Add a search URL alias

To add a search engine alias you can add the following line to the configuration file

example=https://www.example.com/search?abc=%MYSEARCHTERM

With this line on the configuration file, doing search example hey you will do a search on the internet browser using the URL https://www.example.com/search?abc=hey%20you .

I said this is a powerful script, so I will show you why.
I'm gonna open up an advanced section, only for configuring alias to do pretty advanced searches 😉

Advanced search engine alias configuration

Bash parameter expansion (references: Parameter Expansions - Bash Hackers Wiki , 10.2. Parameter Substitution and Bash Parameter Expansions ) powers advanced search configuration.
You can use bash parameter expansion within the configuration file.

Simple example

You want to do a search using your system Linux username. You may (or may not) know that you can get your username by invoking the whoami command.

So, to fulfill this purpose, you can add a search alias (to the configuration file) such as this:

me=https://www.google.com/search?q=${FUNC:-`whoami`}

The ${FUNC:-whoami} is putting the output of the whoami command into the search URL. It is giving dynamic behaviour to the configured search URL.

Simple example of adding an argument

You may want to pass a search argument to the search URL. For example, every time the use the smile alias, we want to pass the 3rd argument of our command to the search URL. Here it is:

smile=https://www.example.com/beautiful-day/${3}/%MYSEARCHTERM

Invoking this script as search smile "daniel is" standing in the shoulders of giants will produce the following search URL:

https://www.example.com/beautiful-day/daniel%20is/standing%20in%20the%20shoulders%20of%20giants

Nit.

Script built-in functions for the configuration file that you may find useful

You can use any function used within this script (and, of course, any function present in your Bash environment). I have made a special place in the code, to configuration file functions. To keep up the code organized, you can write in that section of the code.

function: show_if_else

Function to show one or another word.

Using this line

${FUNC:-`show_if_else ${2} auto pt en es`}

within the configuration file; it will fetch the second argument (because of ${2}) of the search script (running: search smiling you are good the second argument is the word "you"). Put this second argument in ${2}'s place.
Then if this second argument is the same word as "pt", "en" or "es" (which it is not, in the example that I gave) would give the output of that word ("pt", "en" or "es"). Since it is not, it will output the word "auto" ( ${2} is the if, "auto" it is the else ).

function: remove_first_word_if_it_belongs

Function to remove the first word if match other words.

Using this line

${FUNC:-`remove_first_word_if_belongs_to '%MYSEARCHTERM' pt en es fr it`}

within the configuration file; it will first fetch the search term we want to search for. Then it will replace %MYSEARCHTERM with this search term.

If the first argument of this function ( which is %MYSEARCHTERM and corresponds to this script search term argument(s) ) begins with any of this words "pt en es fr it", removes these words; returning the remaining words.

Conclusion

I believe that is everything. You can learn/edit/share this code with anyone, so I dedicate this script to the public domain with my chosen license.

If you want to give me some gift for creating this code, or just want to say something to me, go to my personal page and you can contact me throw there (using the personal page contact form).

Final Message

Enjoy! ... Always

🎆 🌝 🌍