ag

An upgraded version of ack, written in C language, faster and more user-friendly

Supplementary instructions

Excerpted from Readme.md of https://github.com/ggreer/the_silver_searcher project

• It's an order of magnitude faster than ack.
• It ignores file modes in your .gitignore and .hgignore.
• If there are files in your source repository that you don't want to search, just add their patterns to an .ignore file. (cough .min.jscough*)
• The name of this command is 33% shorter than ack, and all keys are on the main line!

grammar

ag [options] pattern [path ...]
ag [optional] match pattern [path...]

Options

Output options:
      --ackmate Display results in AckMate-parseable format
   -A --after [LINES] Display the lines after the matching line (default 2 lines)
   -B --before [LINES] Display lines before matching line (default 2 lines)
      --[no]break Create a new line to display the matched content in different files (enabled by default)
   -c --count Show only the number of matches in each file (usually different from the number of matched lines)
      --[no]color Print color codes in results (enabled by default)
      --color-line-number Color code for line number (default: 1;33).
      --color-match Color code of matching results (default: 30;43).
      --color-path Color code for path name (default: 1;32)
      --column print the column number in the results
      --[no]filename Print filename (enabled unless searching for a single file).
   -H --[no]heading Output file name before each file match (enabled by default)
   -C --context [LINES] Display two lines above and below the matching line (default 2 lines)
      --[no]group Same as these: --[no]break --[no]heading
   -g --filename-pattern PATTERN prints file names matching PATTERN
   -l --files-with-matches Display file names containing matches (do not display matching lines)
   -L --files-without-matches Show only file names without matches
      --print-all-files Print the titles of all searched files, even those that contain no matches.
      --[no]numbers Print line numbers. The default is to omit line numbers when searching streams.
   -o --only-matching Output only the matching part of each line
      --print-long-lines Print match information on very long lines (default: >2k characters).
      --passthrough When searching a stream, print all lines, even if they don't match.
      --silent suppresses all log messages, including errors
      --stats Print statistics (files scanned, time spent, etc.).
      --stats-only prints statistics and no other information (same as --count when searching for a single file).
      --vimgrep prints results like vim's :vimgrep /pattern/g (it reports matches for each line)
   -0 --null --print0 Null-separated file names (for 'xargs -0').

Search options:
   -a --all-types Search all files (including hidden files)
   -D --debug Ridiculous debugging (probably useless)
      --depth NUM directory search maximum depth (default 25)
   -f --follow follow the link to search
   -F --fixed-strings For compatibility with grep, alias for --literal.
   -G --file-search-regex Search for files of the specified type based on regular matching
      --hidden Search for hidden files (but respect .*ignore files)
   -i --ignore-case case-insensitive matching
      --ignore PATTERN ignore files/directories matching PATTERN (text file/directory names are also allowed)
      --ignore-dir NAME Alias for --ignore for compatibility with ack
   -m --max-count NUM Maximum number of matches in a file (default: 10,000)
      --one-device Do not follow link searches for other devices
   -p --path-to-ignore STRING Use .ignore file in STRING
   -Q --literal Do not parse PATTERN as a regular expression
   -s --case-sensitive match cases sensitively
   -S --smart-case Case-insensitive matching unless PATTERN contains uppercase characters
      --search-binary Search binary files
   -t --all-text Search all text files (excluding hidden files)
   -u --unrestricted Search all files (ignore .ignore, .gitignore, e.g. search binary and hidden files)
   -U --skip-vcs-ignores Ignore VCS ignore files (referring to .gitignore, .hgignore; still comply with .ignore).
   -v --invert-match reverse match
   -w --word-regexp matches only whole words
   -W --width NUM truncate matching lines after NUM characters
   -z --search-zip Search the contents of compressed files

file type:
Searches can be limited to certain types of files, for example:
    ag --html needle outputs the results to the specified type of file
    - Search for "needle" in files with the .htm, .html, .shtml or .xhtml suffix

For a list of supported file types, run:
   ag --list-file-types List supported file types

Example

List files containing npm in the current directory

➜ vue-project ag npm ./
README.md
16: npm install
22: npm run dev
28: npm run build