Question

I want to parse the result of a grep command in a browser.
Something like grep -nriI "hello" myFolder
The result is a multiline string:

/home/user/folder/file1:1:hello world
/home/user/folder/file2:1:world hello
/home/user/folder/folder/file3:1:bonjour=hello

First I split the lines to have an array. And parse it with this regex: /^(.*?)\:(\d*)\:(.*?)$/

I have some problems.

1. Parse will not work for result with funny char like double point (:)
2. When I grep a file, I do not get pah:line number:content but only line number:content so it make the regex more complicated (there is no named group in javascript regex).

Has someone already a good parser or a project which parse it. It has to work in a browser…

I will make a jsfiddle.

Answer 1

My grep (on Ubuntu Linux) has some options that could help, though neither of them are POSIX standard.

For ambiguous output:

   -Z, --null
          Output  a  zero  byte  (the ASCII NUL character) instead of the character
          that normally follows a file name.  For example, grep -lZ outputs a  zero
          byte  after  each  file  name  instead of the usual newline.  This option
          makes the  output  unambiguous,  even  in  the  presence  of  file  names
          containing  unusual  characters  like  newlines.  This option can be used
          with commands like find -print0, perl  -0,  sort  -z,  and  xargs  -0  to
          process arbitrary file names, even those that contain newline characters.

For the missing filename:

   -H, --with-filename
          Print the file name for each match.  This is the default  when  there  is
          more than one file to search.

So use grep -nriIHZ and update your regex to something like this (untested):

/^(.*)\0(\d+):(.*)$/