VIFS

1. what problem does this program solve
2. how does it solve it
3. how can I use it

Problem Domain

I program in a pure functional scripting language with manual allocation and freeing in other words a configuration language for a video game, the language has very few programming concepts but manages game state its very annoying to modify and it forces you to use many files because every if statement is a new file recursion was recently updated but sometimes you do just need a list of 100 functions every function is also a seperate file.

I went thruogh three different custom DSL’s and I thought of a better way to do it that would integrate very easily with Grep Vim and Emacs.

how it works

the file format is designed around Grep, I use ripgrep but grep also works though the command might need to be changed

rg -e (.*(?:keyword).*) --vimgrep > out.vifs

I turned the above command to a bat file which is also in the release

rgl test -ttxt out.vifs

This is the output of ripgrep in the vimgrep format gives the file name and line number I pipe that to a file this file can now be edited freely

hello2.txt:3:1:asdf test
hello2.txt:4:1:asdf asdf test
hello2.txt:7:1:asdf test
hello.txt:1:1:test
hello.txt:3:1:one two three test
hello.txt:4:1:one test three
hello.txt:6:1:one test three
hello.txt:8:1:one two test
hello.txt:9:1:test test

and I run this on the outputed file

vifs.exe out.vifs

and vifs will go through every line in out.vifs and swap the lines out for the new one. like how Vim motions is structured file editing this is a small hack to effectively get structured tree editing

this one tools fixes the majority of my personal developement issues

generating lists of files I use Emacs/Vim Macros to generate the text rather than a programming language this wont work for all my needs but it is good enough example

test1.function:1:1:print hello 1
test2.function:1:1:print hello 2
test3.function:1:1:print hello 3
etc...

its not a special format just text

second replacing complex logic, names, magic numbers throughout many files

obviously some would just say well with a good enough regexp you dont need vifs but I am not using regexp and you problably arent either so this makes that issue a little bit better

last it could be used to add to files but its currently very likely to delete lines because it only replaces but adding a feature to append or join the lines into the files is very easy but currently not in the scope of vifs yet

insterting and appending

test1.function:1:1:print hello 1
test1.function:1:i:print hello 2
test1.function:1:a:print hello 3

output

print hello 2
print hello 1
print hello 3

1 replaces line 2 is inserted below 3 is printed after line 1

installation

1. goto the releases page and download
2. put vifs into its own folder I personally have a exe folder for a list of useful executables
3. add that folder to the enviroment variables / path

this is not a tutorial on the last step you also get the rgl bat file I use ripgrep and I am not sure if anything is different between it and normal grep so you can make a request or notify me of any issues or lack there of.