Use Ranger and Sed to Quickly Add Filetags to Org-roam files

By funcsec

- 3 minutes read - 480 words

Here is how I used ranger to add a filetag to org files in a fast and efficient way. I used this when I had to retroactively tag a bunch of org-roam files after a decision to split up my roam files in a different way. It makes adding a tag easy and fast! I modified hundreds of files in just a few minutes, files that I could not pragmatically modify due to no consistency in their content. Hope it will help you too.

Add a line in the middle of a text file

First I used an org file at /tmp/file.org to test on.

cat <<EOF > /tmp/file.org
:PROPERTIES:
:ID:       45c20818-f221-4846-a0ab-6e3d3177b593
:END:
#+title: Test file
this is an example file
we will be trying to add a filetag above the title
EOF

I needed it to add a line around the #+title: part. Luckily this Stack Overflow answer let me know what I needed from my sed command. The command that worked added the new tag line above the existing line, which is fine for this purpose.

The code that worked was

sed -n 'H;${x;s/^\n//;s/#+title\: .*$/\#\+filetags\:\ \:tag\:\n&/;p;}' /tmp/file.org

Which resulted in:

:PROPERTIES:
:ID:       45c20818-f221-4846-a0ab-6e3d3177b593
:END:
#+filetags: :tag:
#+title: Test file
this is an example file
we will be trying to add a filetag after title

Success! The filetag was added above the title.

Writing as a script

Next I made it into a shell script in the home bin $HOME/bin so I could call it with ranger for our org files.

#!/usr/bin/env bash
#
# ./org-tag-add
#   Add tag before the #+title: in an org file

FILE="$1"

sed -n -i 'H;${x;s/^\n//;s/#+title\: .*$/\#\+filetags\:\ \:tag\:\n&/;p;}' "$FILE"

Make sure to add whatever filetag you want to the above script at \:tag\: if you want to use this. I added the sed flag -i so that it would overwrite the file.

Modify the ranger config

To make ranger open .org files with the new script, I modified $HOME/.config/ranger/rifle.conf with the following code near the top. I placed it on line 79 before the main rules.


ext org = $HOME/bin/org-tag-add "$@"

ranger reads the rifle.conf file to know how to open files with certain file extensions, like opening .txt in vim or nano depending on how your $EDITOR bash variable is set.

What this did is open .org files in the script, which adds the tag and close it.

Conclusion

Next, I opened ranger, navigated to the directory with my org files and began “opening” files where I wanted to add the filetag specified in the script. Hitting the l on each of the files opened, add the tag, and then closed the file. Much simpler than opening each in vim or emacs and copy pasting the line in. Much faster too.

When I was done I removed the line from $HOME/.config/ranger/rifle.conf so org files would again open in $EDITOR.

Image by Adolphe Appian