Script to Find Referenced Files in HTML

Some rip-off contractors dumped a trash filled ColdFusion code set on some totally naive (or crooked) dumb-ass bosses. Not a process ran without errors, including many 404 errors in the web server logs. They told me to make it work. I decided to run a bunch of lint type searches on the ColdFusion code for each type of error I found to document the bugs. I found thousands of errors, hundreds of unused files, empty files, etc. This is what you can expect from crooks that do not package code and do not test code before delivery. They are only matched by stupid bosses and contract managers that accept crap and pay money before seeing working results.

A project that uses common software engineering processes (specifications, testing to specifications, bug tracking, packaging code for release, regression testing and release testing) would not find much with a lint script, usually lint type programs give out a bunch of false positive errors, but on this bunch of code there were so many real errors I would have been happy to see a false positive. The code was so bad I think it would have been quicker to rewrite it.

Here is an example of a bash shell script to find missing referenced files from tags in HTML, it is easy to modify for other file reference tags, like "link" tags for css, "script" tags for javascript, "form" tags, "a" tags, ColdFusion tags, etc. And I did do that and found hundreds of instances of missing references for every type of tag I checked. It is a quick and dirty script, but it was useful for the situation.

Missing File Reference Script for Tag Based Languages

#######################
# Note: use the HTML source of this page to copy the script!!
#       The browser hides some of the script when it interprets the HTML!!

# find files that do a call to  image file
# Uses (dirname, basename) to get paths

# Root directory of code files.
LOCATION=docs

find_img () {

cd ${LOCATION}
pwd

CHECK_FILES=$(find . -name "*.htm*" -exec grep -ci '\/    {next;} 
     /\<[Ii][Mm][Gg] /, /\>/ { 
                              sub(/^.*[Ss][Rr][Cc]=/,"");
                              $0=$1;
                              gsub(/"/,"");
                              print;}' ${FILE} | 
                                 egrep -i 'gif|jpg|jpeg|png' | sort -u  )

     for REF_FILE in ${REFERENCES}
     do
         DIRECTORYROOT=$(dirname ${FILE})
         ls ${DIRECTORYROOT}/${REF_FILE} >/dev/null 2>&1
         [ $? != 0 ] && print "file:${FILE}     missing:${REF_FILE}";
     done
done  
}

find_img

# Here are some other type of file references that can use
# a modified form of this script:
#cfinclude template = "../cfdocs/dochome.htm"
#link rel="prefetch" href="/images/big.jpeg"
#link rel="StyleSheet" href="CSS/default.css" type="text/css" 
#form method="get" action="/some/form_script/form_stuff.php"
#script src="missing_javascript_file.js" type="text/javascript"
#a href="missing_link" ...