ack

A text search tool that is easier to use than grep

Install

# You need to install ack-grep under ubuntu, because in the debian system, the name ack is occupied by other software.
sudo apt-get install ack-grep
# alpine Linux-apk package manager install ack
apk install ack

Parameters

These parameters are used very frequently on Linux, especially if you use vim as an IDE.

-c (statistics)/ -i (ignore size)/ -h (hide name)/
-l (only display file name)/ -n (add line number)/ -v (display mismatch)

Features

The ack official website lists the 5 major selling points of this tool:

1. Very fast because it only searches for meaningful things.
2. A more friendly search that ignores things that are not your source code.
3. Designed for source code search to complete tasks with fewer keystrokes.
4. Very light and easy to transplant.
5. Free and open source

Example

When memorizing, it can be roughly divided into these parts:

Searching code search Search output search result processing File presentation File presentation File finding File finding File inclusion/exclusion file filtering

grep common operations

grep -r 'hello_world' # Simple usage
grep '^hello_world' . # Simple regular expression
ls -l | grep .py # Pipe usage

Searching

Simple text search, recursive by default.

ack-grep hello
ack-grep -i hello
ack-grep -v hello
ack-grep -w hello
ack-grep -Q 'hello*'

Search File

Process the search results, such as displaying only one match for a file, or xxx

ack-grep --line=1 # Output the second line of all files
ack-grep -l 'hello' # Contained file name
ack-grep -L 'print' # Non-included file name

File presentation

How are the output results displayed? There are several parameters in this part that you can practice with.

ack-grep hello --pager='less -R' # Display in less format
ack-grep hello --noheading # Do not display files in the header
ack-grep hello --nocolor # Do not color matching characters

File finding

Yes, it can find files to save you the trouble of constantly combining find and grep, although the idea in Linux is that a tool does one thing well.

ack-grep -f hello.py # Find all matching files
ack-grep -g hello.py$ # Find regular matching files
ack-grep -g hello --sort-files # Search and sort

File inclusion/exclusion

File filtering, I personally think this is a very good feature. You may find this useful if you have ever accidentally hit a keyword in the log while searching for project source code.

ack-grep --python hello # Find all python files
ack-grep -G hello.py$ hello # Find files matching regular patterns

References

• ack official website