The fsq ('file system query' - pronounced, 'fisk') utility is a tool for doing ad-hoc queries against a file system using a SQL-like expression language. This is useful for finding files that match certain criteria without writing a one-off script to do so.

Download the binary for your platform and add it to your command line path.

fsq takes a single argument: the expression. This expression is composed of the following parts:

<attribute list> [not] in <locations> where <conditions>

To recursively find all files under the '/data' directory that start with the characters 'hello' and are larger than 5 mb, the following query could be used:

fsq "name in '/data' where name startswith 'hello' and size > 5m"

If the location (in the above case, '/data') is omitted, fsq will default to the current directory:

fsq "name where name startswith 'hello' and size > 5m"

Multiple locations can be specified as well:

fsq "name in '/opt', '/media' where size > 5m"

Locations may also be excluded. In the following example, all locations under the current directory except for .git will be searched for files containing the string, "implements MyInterface":

fsq "path not in '.git' where content contains 'implements MyInterface'"

The attribute list specifies which attributes are printed to standard out by fsq. In the above case, this is just the filename ('name'). The following example will print both the path to the file and the size (in bytes):

fsq "path,size in '/opt' where size > 5m"

• name
• path
• size
• fsize (can be used in the attribute list, but cannot be queried)
• content (content can be queried, but cannot be added to the attribute list for printing)
• modified (format: 'MM/DD/YYYY' or 'MM/DD/YYYY hh:mm:ss')
• sha1
• sha256
• md5
• stats (can be used in the attribute list, but cannot be queried)

• <
• <=
• >
• >=
• =
• !=
• startswith
• endswith
• isdir (this operator does not take any arguments)
• isfile (this operator does not take any arguments)
• contains
• ignorecase (must be followed by '=', '!=', 'startswith', 'endswith', or 'contains')
• matches (regular expression matching)

Parentheses as well as the logical operators or, and, and not can be used to group conditions. For example:

fsq "name in '.' where name startswith 'hello' or (isdir and not name startswith 'world')"

The following size qualifiers can be appended to integer values to indicate non-default units. These are especially useful when specifying file sizes in expressions. If no size qualifier is appended to an integer, fsq compares the value in bytes.

• k - Kilobytes
• m - Megabytes
• g - Gigabytes

For example, to find all files greater than 10 kilobytes and less than 1 megabyte:

fsq "path where size > 10k and size < 1m"

The go compiler is required to build fsq. If you have make installed, fsq can be installed with:

make install

Otherwise, the following commands will need to be run while in the fsq directory:

go get golang.org/x/tools/cmd/goyacc
go install golang.org/x/tools/cmd/goyacc
goyacc parser.y
go install