3 ms·

I hate that ripgrep won't let you specify an arbitrary list of filename extensions to search. You have to do some voodoo to get it to only search .foo files. Wi

I hate that ripgrep won't let you specify an arbitrary list of filename extensions to search. You have to do some voodoo to get it to only search .foo files. With ag it's as simple as -G foo. It's better than ag in a lot of ways, but there are little pain points like that which make me shift back and forth between tools.

apeace 9y ago
You can't accomplish that with the -g glob flag?
- sillysaurus3 9y ago
  $ rg -g l foo No files were searched, which means ripgrep probably applied a filter you didn't expect. Try running again with --debug. Empirically not! :) EDIT: I see, you have to do "rg -g '*.l' foo". Well, that's a bit silly. Why force people to put asterisks inside of single quotes on the command line? Asterisks have a specific meaning in a shell setting. It's five times longer than -G l, the ag equivalent. EDIT: Thanks for all the explanations.
  - beefsack 9y ago
    This is because of the shell, not the executable. The shell will translate `*` into a relevant list of files before passing them to the executable.
  - coldtea 9y ago
    >I see, you have to do "rg -g '.l' foo" Actually it's just: rg -g '*.js' query And if it's a known file type, like js, you can do (-t type): rg -g -t js >Why force people to put asterisks inside of single quotes on the command line?* Because else the shell will auto-expand the asterisk before it even gets to rg, and rg will instead get the expanded list of files that match the pattern. E.g. if you have a.js b.js /foo in a folder, then: rg -g *.js query will be expanded by your shell to: rg -g a.js b.js query and THEN run. rg will never see the asterisk in that case (and it also wont search inside /foo).
  - burntsushi 9y ago
    `ag -G l` and `rg -g '{STAR}.l'` are not equivalent. The former will match any file name that contains `l` where as the latter will match any file name that ends with `.l`. (ag's -G flag accepts a regex with match-anywhere semantics, where rg's -g flag accepts a glob that matches on the basename of a file, e.g., `rg -g Makefile` will search all files name `Makefile`.) The asterisk is part of standard globbing. You can also write it as `rg -g \{STAR}.l foo`, if you find that nicer. If you want to match a list of extensions, then you can fall back to standard glob syntax: `rg -g '{STAR}.{foo,bar,baz}' pattern`. Or, as others have mentioned, if you're searching for standard file types, you can use the `-t/--type` flag. e.g., To search HTML, CSS and Javascript: `rg -tjs -thtml -tcss foo`. Basically, ripgrep's `-g` flag is supposed to match grep's `--include` flag, which also uses globs and requires the same type of ceremony. I'd like to add --include/--exclude to match grep's behavior more precisely (which is based on user complaints wanting those flags). N.B. Replace {STAR} in text above with a literal asterisk symbol.
  - ephl 9y ago
    If you're using bash you don't need single quotes: rg -g*.l foo
amelius 9y ago
It seems that ripgrep looks at .gitignore files. You could write such a file to exclude glob-patterns.

apeace 9y ago

You can't accomplish that with the -g glob flag?

sillysaurus3 9y ago
$ rg -g l foo No files were searched, which means ripgrep probably applied a filter you didn't expect. Try running again with --debug. Empirically not! :) EDIT: I see, you have to do "rg -g '*.l' foo". Well, that's a bit silly. Why force people to put asterisks inside of single quotes on the command line? Asterisks have a specific meaning in a shell setting. It's five times longer than -G l, the ag equivalent. EDIT: Thanks for all the explanations.
- beefsack 9y ago
  This is because of the shell, not the executable. The shell will translate `*` into a relevant list of files before passing them to the executable.
- coldtea 9y ago
  >I see, you have to do "rg -g '.l' foo" Actually it's just: rg -g '*.js' query And if it's a known file type, like js, you can do (-t type): rg -g -t js >Why force people to put asterisks inside of single quotes on the command line?* Because else the shell will auto-expand the asterisk before it even gets to rg, and rg will instead get the expanded list of files that match the pattern. E.g. if you have a.js b.js /foo in a folder, then: rg -g *.js query will be expanded by your shell to: rg -g a.js b.js query and THEN run. rg will never see the asterisk in that case (and it also wont search inside /foo).
- burntsushi 9y ago
  `ag -G l` and `rg -g '{STAR}.l'` are not equivalent. The former will match any file name that contains `l` where as the latter will match any file name that ends with `.l`. (ag's -G flag accepts a regex with match-anywhere semantics, where rg's -g flag accepts a glob that matches on the basename of a file, e.g., `rg -g Makefile` will search all files name `Makefile`.) The asterisk is part of standard globbing. You can also write it as `rg -g \{STAR}.l foo`, if you find that nicer. If you want to match a list of extensions, then you can fall back to standard glob syntax: `rg -g '{STAR}.{foo,bar,baz}' pattern`. Or, as others have mentioned, if you're searching for standard file types, you can use the `-t/--type` flag. e.g., To search HTML, CSS and Javascript: `rg -tjs -thtml -tcss foo`. Basically, ripgrep's `-g` flag is supposed to match grep's `--include` flag, which also uses globs and requires the same type of ceremony. I'd like to add --include/--exclude to match grep's behavior more precisely (which is based on user complaints wanting those flags). N.B. Replace {STAR} in text above with a literal asterisk symbol.
- ephl 9y ago
  If you're using bash you don't need single quotes: rg -g*.l foo

amelius 9y ago

It seems that ripgrep looks at .gitignore files. You could write such a file to exclude glob-patterns.