The program expects as a first argument a regex like "n.?vim" and then either one or more files or a stream where to look for the regex.

For example:

ruby kwic.rb "n.?vim" file1.txt file2.txt

The resulting output consists of a column with the filename, a second with the line number and word number, a third column with 4 words coming before the keyword, a middle column with the keyword and a column with 4 words coming after the keyword.

File | Line:Word |
test.txt | 3: 5 | In front of the keyword this comes after it

The actual class Kwic is included in a module with the same name so that it can be required and used in other programs. Creating an instance is straightforward, just pass the keyword as an argument: concordance = Kwic::Kwic.new(keyword). After that take care to import the data to look through, to process it and to output the results. In the program this is done by

concordance.read_file
# Alternatively, you can use the method `read_string` which takes a string as an argument.
# concordance.read_string(text)
concordance.process
concordance.print_keyword_in_context
concordance.print_summary

To use the program on its own on the command line, follow these steps:

1. Download it anywhere in your $PATH.
2. mv kwic.rb kwic
3. chmod +x kwic
4. Run it by kwic "keyword" file1 file2 file3 or echo 'This is a test.' | kwic "is" –

See Licence