I've not used ag but just a small shout out for ack: it's a single Perl file (easy to install, v1.x will work with even antique Perl), it works on weird hardwar

I've not used ag but just a small shout out for ack: it's a single Perl file (easy to install, v1.x will work with even antique Perl), it works on weird hardware/OS (no compilation required), it contains its own man-page (ack -man) and is fast enough for typical sysadmin tasks and moderate size codebases. (Ack also supports the full PCRE syntax but that's less of an issue now rg has -P). If your work takes you to minority platforms ack is certainly worth keeping in your toolbox.