MySQL Windows Users – Use Grep to Search MySQL Source Code

For Windows users, if you try searching the MySQL source code for various strings, you know you will often come up empty with the built-in Windows search.

It wasn’t too long ago and I was searching the source for “MALLOC_OVERHEAD”. My Windows search came up empty, and someone suggested I try grep for Windows.

Well, I downloaded it, extracted it to the location I wanted, and added the .exe to the $PATH.

Now I can grep away!

See the new results when searching for “MALLOC_OVERHEAD”:

C:\mysql-5.5\mysql-5.5>grep -r "MALLOC_OVERHEAD" .
./client/mysql.cc:   (longlong) 2*1024L*1024L*1024L, MALLOC_OVERHEAD, 1024, 0},
./client/mysql.cc:   REQUIRED_ARG, 16384, 1024, 512*1024*1024L, MALLOC_OVERHEAD, 1024, 0},
./client/mysqldump.c:   (longlong) 2L*1024L*1024L*1024L, MALLOC_OVERHEAD, 1024, 0},
./client/mysqldump.c:   MALLOC_OVERHEAD-1024, 1024, 0},
./client/mysqltest.cc:    my_malloc(((PC_MALLOC-MALLOC_OVERHEAD)/
./client/mysqltest.cc:    if (!(pa->str= (uchar*) my_malloc((uint) (PS_MALLOC-MALLOC_OVERHEAD),
./client/mysqltest.cc:    pa->max_count=(PC_MALLOC-MALLOC_OVERHEAD)/(sizeof(uchar*)+
./client/mysqltest.cc:    pa->max_length=PS_MALLOC-MALLOC_OVERHEAD;
./client/mysqltest.cc:    len=(PC_MALLOC*pa->array_allocs - MALLOC_OVERHEAD);
./extra/replace.c:        my_malloc(((PC_MALLOC-MALLOC_OVERHEAD)/
./extra/replace.c:    if (!(pa->str= (uchar*) my_malloc((uint) (PS_MALLOC-MALLOC_OVERHEAD),
./extra/replace.c:    pa->max_count=(PC_MALLOC-MALLOC_OVERHEAD)/(sizeof(uchar*)+
./extra/replace.c:    pa->max_length=PS_MALLOC-MALLOC_OVERHEAD;
./extra/replace.c:    pa->max_length=(pa->length+length+MALLOC_OVERHEAD+PS_MALLOC-1)/PS_MALLOC;
./extra/replace.c:    pa->max_length=pa->max_length*PS_MALLOC-MALLOC_OVERHEAD;
./extra/replace.c:    len=(PC_MALLOC*pa->array_allocs - MALLOC_OVERHEAD);
./include/my_global.h:  something like 1024-MALLOC_OVERHEAD bytes
./include/my_global.h:#define MALLOC_OVERHEAD 8
./include/my_global.h:#define ONCE_ALLOC_INIT           (uint) (4096-MALLOC_OVERHEAD)
./include/my_global.h:#define RECORD_CACHE_SIZE (uint) (64*1024-MALLOC_OVERHEAD)
./include/my_sys.h:#define ALLOC_ROOT_MIN_BLOCK_SIZE (MALLOC_OVERHEAD + sizeof(USED_MEM) + 8 )
Binary file ./MySQL.ncb matches
./mysys/array.c:    alloc_increment=max((8192-MALLOC_OVERHEAD)/element_size,16);
./storage/myisam/ha_myisam.cc:  8192*1024, (long) (MIN_SORT_BUFFER + MALLOC_OVERHEAD), ULONG_MAX, 1);
./storage/myisam/myisamchk.c:    GET_ULL, REQUIRED_ARG, USE_BUFFER_INIT, MALLOC_OVERHEAD,
./storage/myisam/myisamchk.c:    SIZE_T_MAX, MALLOC_OVERHEAD,  IO_SIZE, 0},
./storage/myisam/myisamchk.c:    (long) READ_BUFFER_INIT, (long) MALLOC_OVERHEAD,
./storage/myisam/myisamchk.c:    INT_MAX32, (long) MALLOC_OVERHEAD, (long) 1L, 0},
./storage/myisam/myisamchk.c:    (long) READ_BUFFER_INIT, (long) MALLOC_OVERHEAD,
./storage/myisam/myisamchk.c:    INT_MAX32, (long) MALLOC_OVERHEAD, (long) 1L, 0},
./storage/myisam/myisamchk.c:    (long) SORT_BUFFER_INIT, (long) (MIN_SORT_BUFFER + MALLOC_OVERHEAD),
./storage/myisam/myisamchk.c:    ULONG_MAX, (long) MALLOC_OVERHEAD, (long) 1L, 0},
./storage/myisam/myisamdef.h:#define USE_BUFFER_INIT            (((1024L*512L-MALLOC_OVERHEAD)/IO_SIZE)*IO_SIZE)
./storage/myisam/myisamdef.h:#define READ_BUFFER_INIT   (1024L*256L-MALLOC_OVERHEAD)
./storage/myisam/myisamdef.h:#define SORT_BUFFER_INIT   (2048L*1024L-MALLOC_OVERHEAD)
./storage/myisam/myisamdef.h:#define MIN_SORT_BUFFER            (4096-MALLOC_OVERHEAD)
./storage/myisam/myisampack.c:static uint tree_buff_length= 65536 - MALLOC_OVERHEAD;

Unlike the Windows search, which simply returns the file name, this shows the file name *and* the full line of code, therefore sometimes answering my question without even needing to examine the source code.

This full search of the source code (which I had stored in C:\mysql-5.5\mysql-5.5) took only about 2 minutes. This is not bad (and certainly not worse than the Windows search), not to mention there’s no need to index your system, nor build/store the resulting several-GB-search-index-file, aka windows.edb).

Personally, I use the ‘GnuWin32′ grep for Windows, available from SourceForge:

http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/grep.htm

I’m sure there are others, but I’ve had great success using many of the GnuWin32 utilities available for Windows.

Happy grepping!