Install idsgrep with Homebrew

Project links

• Homepage
• Repository
• Upstream docs
• Package manager page

Commands and aliases

• idsgrep

Project history

IDSgrep came from the Tsukurimashou Project, a Japanese-language font project by Matthew Skala. The manual explains that Tsukurimashou's glyphs were implemented in MetaPost-like code whose structure mirrored character appearance, creating a practical need to find other characters that reused the same visual components.

The manual frames the tool as a response to limitations in radical-and-stroke, SKIP, Four Corners, multi-radical, handwriting, and GUI dictionary search methods. IDSgrep made those searches scriptable and composable on the command line.

The published manual carries copyright years 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2021. Its 2021 notes explain that version 0.6 was released after version 0.5 to show continued maintenance, refresh bundled data, and fix standalone packaging problems.

Adoption history

Adoption appears narrow and specialized: CJK font development, dictionary data work, Unicode IDS experiments, and command-line users who need structural character queries. The Homebrew formula packages it with CHISE data and tests it by querying character decomposition data.

IDSgrep's home page says it can include or generate dictionary data from Tsukurimashou, KanjiVG, CHISE, and EDICT2, so its adoption story is tied to those data projects more than to a large standalone application ecosystem.

How it is used

IDSgrep is invoked much like grep: users provide a structural pattern and one or more input files, or use default dictionaries. Patterns can match literal characters, subtrees, wildcards, Boolean operators, regular expressions over meanings, and Unicode Ideographic Description Characters.

The tool is useful when a user knows a character's visual parts but not its code point, pronunciation, radical, or stroke count. It can also support font authors looking for existing glyph components or unimplemented characters that could share construction patterns.

Why package nerds care

IDSgrep is a classic package-manager curiosity: a tiny CLI with deep domain knowledge, binding together Unicode, CJK lexicography, font production, and Unix text-filter habits.

It is also a reminder that grep-like interfaces are not limited to flat text. IDSgrep packages a tree matcher and domain datasets as a command-line utility, which makes it unusually powerful for a problem most users only encounter through dictionary GUIs.

Timeline

• 2012: IDSgrep manual copyright coverage begins.
• 2014: Version 0.5 is referenced by the manual as the earlier release before the later maintenance gap.
• 2021-03-30: Version 0.6 tarball is published on the project site.
• 2021: Version 0.6 refreshes bundled data and packaging.
• 2023-10-26: The manual identifies itself as version 0.7pre.

Related projects

• Tsukurimashou is the parent project and original motivating use case.
• KanjiVG, CHISE, EDICT2, Unicode Ideographic Description Sequences, and traditional Unix grep are the closest related data sources and conceptual neighbors.

Sources

• http://svn.osdn.net/svnroot/tsukurimashou/trunk/idsgrep
• https://formulae.brew.sh/formula/idsgrep
• https://tsukurimashou.org/idsgrep.pdf
• https://tsukurimashou.org/idsgrep.php.en