A simple tool for curation and lookup of definitions and for other dictionary-like purposes

This is a reimplementation (and enhancement) of a stupid bash script I created and used fairly regularly in my latest assignment.

The new implementation is in Rust mostly as a personal learning exercise!

This will change a lot...

Env var DEFINITIONS_DICTIONARY_PATH is consulted - if present the definitions paths are populated from this. If not present the definitions paths are populated with the default paths:

• ~/.config/define
• ~/.define
• /etc/define

Each definition path is combined with the first parameter to give a file name until a user readable file is found.

• If no file is found an error message is sent to stderr and the program exits with an error code.
• If a file is found the contents are copied to stdout and the program exits with a success code.

Each definition path is combined with the first parameter to give a file name until a user writeable file is found (or a user writeable file can be created).

• If no such file can be found or created an error message is sent to stderr and the program exits with an error code.
• If a file is found or created then the contents of the second parameter are normalised.
• The contents of the file are tested for the presence of a normalised copy of the second parameter.
• If the normalised copy of the second parameter is not found then it is appended as a new line to the file.
• The normalised copy of the second parameter is then written to stdout and the program exits with a success code.

The --delete option can be used to delete an existing defition, starting with the "closest" definition in the definitions paths. Note that if a single path entry for a term contains multiple definitions of the term then all of the definitions in the closest entry will be deleted.

For example:

$ define lol
No definition found for 'lol'
$ define lol 'Laugh Out Loud'
Laugh Out Loud
$ define lol 'Lots of Love'
Laugh Out Loud
Lots of Love
$ define lol
Laugh Out Loud
Lots of Love
$ define --delete lol
$ define lol
No definition found for 'lol'

Not yet implemented

Any whitespace between non-whitespace tokens is normalised to a single space character. The text is trimmed to remove any leading or trailing spaces. If the result is an empty string an error is written to stdout and the program exits with an error code.

This is not an exhaustive list

• Lookup directory handling and parsing
• Complete the basic read behaviour
• Proper error handling (read path) including error levels
• Add ability to list the extant definitions
• Tests!
• Logging output
• Drive logging from clap parameter instead of DEFINE_LOG(changed default from RUST_LOG) (and default to completely off!)
• Complete the basic write behaviour
• Handle the directory not existing during when storing a value (attempt to create)
• Colour (ANSI) output
• Add an asciinema demo to the README!
• Normalisation
• Ignore attempts to add duplicate definitions
• Tidy up any TODO issues
• Match read-paths ignoring case (i.e. currently "LOTR" != "LotR") (achieved by squashing to lower-case by default, added flag to optionally disable)
• Basic deletion capability
• Update the asciinema demo to include the delete capability

• Namespacing
  • My thinking here is that one might wish to distinguish between definitions in various context, so that for example define bff --context social-media might output 'Best Friends Forever' but define bff --context development might output 'Backend For Frontend' ... but that's very clunky and does it add enough value to be worth bothering? Something to ponder.
  • Another thought is that if the invoked binary's renamed (or symlinked) to something other than "define" I could use that as the context name, then I could just do social-media bff instead of needing to add that argument
• Allow for hosting of definitions on a remote server instead of, or as well as, in the local filesystem.
  • I'm torn between a custom protocol (which is more fun) and just using Redis or something similar that already exists.
• Maybe fix up for Windows as well as Linux?
  • Although I don't have a Windows machine or want one, so maybe not. Besides, maybe it already works ok? Let me know if you know.

Errorlevels may change. Scripts should test for success (status == 0) or failure (status != 0) only.