The Glimpse package contains several programs, the most important of which are glimpse, glimpseindex, agrep, and glimpseserver.
A. To Create an Index
- Glimpse supports three indices:
a. a tiny one (2-3% of the size of all files)
- (glimpseindex ~)
b. a small one (7-9%)
- (glimpseindex -o ~)
c. a medium one (20-30%)
- (glimpseindex -b ~)
The larger the index the faster the search.
1. To index all files in a directory tree rooted at DIR:
glimpseindex DIR
2. To index everything at or below your home directory:
glimpseindex ~
B. To Search an Index
- 1. To search for "unbelievable":
glimpse unbelievable
- 2. To search for "unbelievable" with one spelling error:
glimpse -1 unbelievable
- 3. To search for all occurrences of "computer" in all files with "ICS" somewhere in their name:
glimpse -F ICS computer
- 4. To search for all occurrences of both "software" and "configuration" in the same line of a file:
glimpse 'software;configuration'
- 5. To search for all occurrences of "software" but not "configuration" in the same line of a file:
glimpse -W 'software;~configuration'
C. Glimpse Server
Glimpseserver starts a process that listens to queries, runs glimpse, and sends the answers back. The main advantage is that the index is read only once into memory saving a lot of IO. Glimpse communicates with glimpseserver through a given port number.
D. wgconvert
A program to compress and decompress neighborhoods (a set number of hops from each page - used by WebGlimpse).
E. Other Glimpse References
- Glimpse homepage: http://webglimpse.net/
