Find all distinct IP addresses and print them in lexicographical order - algorithm

Question

I have a hierarchy of directories and some files in some of those directories:
/root/development/dir1/file1.txt, file2.txt, ...
/root/development/dir2/file3.txt, file4, ...
/root/development/file6.in, file7.out, ...
...
Some of these files contain IP addresses inside the text. In the form x.x.x.x where each x is a number from 0 to 255 (inclusive).
For example, say we have file1.txt that looks like this:
hello world 127.0.0.1
this is some example 128.99.107.55
file with some correct and incorrect 128.128.4.11 ip 0.11.1115.78 addresses
This file contains only 3 IP addresses, namely 127.0.0.1, 128.99.107.55, and 128.128.4.11, since 0.11.1115.78 is not a valid IP address.
I need to write a program (in java or python) to find all distinct IP addresses from all the files in the /root/development/ directory and print them in lexicographical order.
The input will be a setup shell script, and the code should print the required data to stdout.
An example shell script is as follows:
#!/bin/bash
rm -rf /root/development
mkdir /root/development
mkdir /root/development/dir1
mkdir /root/development/dir2
touch /root/development/dir1/file1.txt
echo -e "hello world 127.0.0.1\nthis is some example 128.99.107.55 \nfile with some correct and incorrect 128.128.4.11 ip 0.11.1115.78 addressesaddresses" >> /root/development/dir1/file1.txt
touch /root/development/dir1/file2.txt
echo -e "hello from 74.0.65.76 and 8.dd.99.88.907 good\nthis is some example 16.1215.76.35 \nfile with some correct and incorrect 15.128.4.65 ip addresses\n0.0.0.0" >> /root/development/dir1/file2.txt
touch /root/development/dir2/file3.txt
echo -e "127.65.64.1 127.0.64.1 127.0.0.1\nexample 128.57.107.76 128.57.907.70 \nfile with some correct and incorrect 67.128.4.11 ip addresses 7.7.7.8" >> /root/development/dir2/file3.txt
touch /root/development/dir2/file4.txt
echo -e "hello world 127.98.0.1\nthis is some example 128.96.107.55 \nfile with some correct and incorrect 128.68.4.11 ip addresses" >> /root/development/dir2/file4.txt
touch /root/development/f.inp
echo -e "hello world 127.0.49.1 \nthis is some example 128.99.58.55 8.88.888.88 77.255.255.254\n7.7.257.25 file with some correct and incorrect 26.56.4.23 ip addresses" >> /root/development/f.inp
Example
For the following /root/development/ directory:
/root/development/dir1/file1.txt
hello world 127.0.0.1
this is some example 128.99.107.55
file with some correct and incorrect 128.128.4.11 ip 0.11.1115.78 addressesaddresses
/root/development/dir1/file2.txt
hello from 74.0.65.76 and 8.dd.99.88.907 good
this is some example 306.5.76.35
file with some correct and incorrect 15.128.4.65 ip addresses
0.0.0.0
/root/development/dir2/file3.txt
127.65.64.1 127.0.64.1 127.0.0.1
exaMple 128.57.107.76 128.57.907.70
file with some correct and incorrect 67.128.4.11 ip addresses 7.7.7.8
/root/devops/dir2/file4.txt
hello world 127.98.0.1
this is some example 128.96.107.55
file with some correct and incorrect 128.68.4.11 ip addresses
/root/development/f.inp
hello world 127.0.49.1
this is some example 128.99.58.55 8.88.888.88 77.255.255.254
7.7.257.25 file with some correct and incorrect 26.56.4.23 ip addresses
The output should be
0.0.0.0
127.0.0.1
127.0.49.1
127.0.64.1
127.65.64.1
127.98.0.1
128.128.4.11
128.57.107.76
128.68.4.11
128.96.107.55
128.99.107.55
128.99.58.55
15.128.4.65
26.56.4.23
67.128.4.11
7.7.7.8
74.0.65.76
77.255.255.254

Answer 1

From your comment, I assume that you have no or very little pre-existing programming knowledge, so I'll try to broadly explain steps of how you could tackle this project.
For each of the following steps, if you don't know how to do it (which is expected if you're new to programming), try an internet search to know how to do that step in your chosen language.
Step 0. First, you should choose between Java and Python. Both can be used for this, it's just a matter of what language you know the best at this time, or have already installed on your computer...
Step 1: write the code to read the content of just one file. You can temporarily write the whole file content to stdout to ensure that this works well.
Step 2. change the code to print only the IP adresses from the file content (maybe using regex to extract the IP adresses from the file content)
Step 3. remove duplicate IP adresses. You'll probably do that by putting IP adresses in a list and apply an existing Java/Python function to that list, and then print the list to stdout
Step 4. sort the list before printing it
Now you want to do the same thing, but on several files:
Step 5. Write code to list all the files of one folder
Step 6. Write code to list all the files of one folder and all it's subfolders, recursively
Step 7. Combine your code from Steps 1-4 with code from Steps 5-6 to achieve the result you want

Answer 2

To approach above problem we will have to be good with regex and file handling. The below code is in python should help you to move forward
Code
from pathlib import Path
import re
# Get lines from the files
myDir = r"C:\Users\myuser\Downloads\find\yourFolder"
result = list(Path(myDir).rglob("*.[tT][xX][tT]"))
ips = []
flatList = []
def getListOfIps():
for i in result:
with open(i) as f:
for text in f.readlines():
text = text.rstrip()
regex = re.findall(
r'(?:[\d]{1,3})\.(?:[\d]{1,3})\.(?:[\d]{1,3})\.(?:[\d]{1,3})', text)
if regex is not None and regex not in ips:
ips.append(regex)
# Get the list of IPs
def check(Ip):
if(re.search(myPattern, Ip)): # re.search returns None (if the pattern doesn’t match)
return True
else:
return False
myPattern = "^((25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|1[0-9][0-9]|[1-9]?[0-9])\.){3}(25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|1[0-9][0-9]|[1-9]?[0-9])"
getListOfIps()
flatList = [ item for elem in ips for item in elem]
flatList.sort()
for eachIP in flatList:
if check(eachIP):
print(f"{eachIP}")
# May require for future improvements
# matches for 8.dd.99.88 is (?:[\d]{1,3})\.(?:[\d]|[a-z]{1,3})\.(?:[\d]{1,3})\.(?:[\d]{1,3})
if you are new to programming and need some reference program you may look at my repo https://github.com/Kapil987/Python_prac/tree/master