Quick searching with dmenu

Description

Prompts for a query with dmenu and posts it to the selected search engine. The engine is specified by a single-character code that precedes the actual query, e.g. 'w pancakes' would search en.wikipedia.org for the string 'pancakes'. This reduces the necessary shell plumbing to a couple of pipes and a case statement.

Character ugliness in the query is avoided using od and tr. This has worked so far.

EDIT: Replaced xxd with od and eliminated a sed pipe. Replaced cut pipes with sh variable expansion.

Author

Wolfgang Corcoran-Mathe

Installation

Copy the following code into an executable file and place it in PATH. Edit surf/config.def.h as described in the header.

Code

#!/bin/sh
#
# surf_qsearch:
# Search script for surf. Takes the surf window id as argument.
# POSIX compliant and GNU-free, I think.
#
# Add something like the following to your surf/config.(def.)h, replacing
# surf_qsearch with the name of the file you've copied this code into:
#
# /* Quick searching. */
# #define QSEARCH { \
#     .v = (char *[]){"/bin/sh", "-c", "surf_qsearch $0 $1", winid, NULL } \
# }
#
# Add a keybinding in keys[]:
#
# { MODKEY, GDK_q, spawn, QSEARCH },
#

# Get the full query. The 'echo | dmenu' idiom may be a bit of
# a hack, but it seems to work.
q="$(echo | dmenu)"
[ -z "$q" ] && exit 0

# Extract the engine code.
e="${q%% *}"

# Encode the search string (i.e. the rest of q). xxd was formerly used
# here, but xxd is part of vim packages on some systems, whereas od is
# ubiquitous. A search script that breaks if someone accidentally removes
# vim is stupid.
s=$(printf %s "${q#* }" | tr -d '\n' | od -t x1 -An |  tr ' ' '%')

# These are examples. Change as desired.
# 's' = startpage.com
# 'w' = wikipedia.org
# 'a' = wiki.archlinux.org
# 'd' = en.wiktionary.org
case $e in
	's')
		xprop -id $1 -f _SURF_GO 8s -set _SURF_GO "https://startpage.com/do/search?q=${s}"
		;;
	'w')
		xprop -id $1 -f _SURF_GO 8s -set _SURF_GO "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/index.php/Special:Search?search=${s}&go=Go"
		;;
	'a')
		xprop -id $1 -f _SURF_GO 8s -set _SURF_GO "https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Special:Search?search=${s}&go=Go"
		;;
	'd')
		xprop -id $1 -f _SURF_GO 8s -set _SURF_GO "https://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?search=${s}&go=Go"
		;;
	*)
		exit 1
		;;
esac