path: root/doc/rg.1.txt.tpl

rg(1)
=====

Name
----
rg - recursively search the current directory for lines matching a pattern


Synopsis
--------
*rg* [_OPTIONS_] _PATTERN_ [_PATH_...]

*rg* [_OPTIONS_] *-e* _PATTERN_... [_PATH_...]

*rg* [_OPTIONS_] *-f* _PATTERNFILE_... [_PATH_...]

*rg* [_OPTIONS_] *--files* [_PATH_...]

*rg* [_OPTIONS_] *--type-list*

*command* | *rg* [_OPTIONS_] _PATTERN_

*rg* [_OPTIONS_] *--help*

*rg* [_OPTIONS_] *--version*


DESCRIPTION
-----------
ripgrep (rg) recursively searches the current directory for a regex pattern.
By default, ripgrep will respect your .gitignore and automatically skip hidden
files/directories and binary files.

ripgrep's default regex engine uses finite automata and guarantees linear
time searching. Because of this, features like backreferences and arbitrary
look-around are not supported. However, if ripgrep is built with PCRE2, then
the *--pcre2* flag can be used to enable backreferences and look-around.

ripgrep supports configuration files. Set *RIPGREP_CONFIG_PATH* to a
configuration file. The file can specify one shell argument per line. Lines
starting with *#* are ignored. For more details, see the man page or the
*README*.

ripgrep will automatically detect if stdin exists and search stdin for a regex
pattern, e.g. *ls | rg foo*. In some environments, stdin may exist when it
shouldn't. To turn off stdin detection explicitly specify the directory to
search, e.g. *rg foo ./*.

Tip: to disable all smart filtering and make ripgrep behave a bit more like
classical grep, use *rg -uuu*.


REGEX SYNTAX
------------
ripgrep uses Rust's regex engine by default, which documents its syntax:
https://docs.rs/regex/*/regex/#syntax

ripgrep uses byte-oriented regexes, which has some additional documentation:
https://docs.rs/regex/*/regex/bytes/index.html#syntax

To a first approximation, ripgrep uses Perl-like regexes without look-around or
backreferences. This makes them very similar to the "extended" (ERE) regular
expressions supported by *egrep*, but with a few additional features like
Unicode character classes.

If you're using ripgrep with the *--pcre2* flag, then please consult
https://www.pcre.org or the PCRE2 man pages for documentation on the supported
syntax.


POSITIONAL ARGUMENTS
--------------------
_PATTERN_::
  A regular expression used for searching. To match a pattern beginning with a
  dash, use the -e/--regexp option.

_PATH_::
  A file or directory to search. Directories are searched recursively. File
  paths specified explicitly on the command line override glob and ignore
  rules.


OPTIONS
-------
Note that many options can be disabled via flags. In some cases, those flags
are not listed in a first class way below. For example, the *--column*
flag (listed below) enables column numbers in ripgrep's output, but the
*--no-column* flag (not listed below) disables them. The reverse can also
exist. For example, the *--no-ignore* flag (listed below) disables ripgrep's
*gitignore* logic, but the *--ignore* flag (not listed below) enables it. These
flags are useful for overriding a ripgrep configuration file on the command
line. Each flag's documentation notes whether an inverted flag exists. In all
cases, the flag specified last takes precedence.

{OPTIONS}


EXIT STATUS
-----------
If ripgrep finds a match, then the exit status of the program is 0. If no match
could be found, then the exit status is 1. If an error occurred, then the exit
status is always 2 unless ripgrep was run with the *--quiet* flag and a match
was found. In summary:

* `0` exit status occurs only when at least one match was found, and if
  no error occurred, unless *--quiet* was given.
* `1` exit status occurs only when no match was found and no error occurred.
* `2` exit status occurs when an error occurred. This is true for both
  catastrophic errors (e.g., a regex syntax error) and for soft errors (e.g.,
  unable to read a file).


AUTOMATIC FILTERING
-------------------
TL;DR - To disable automatic filtering, use 'rg -uuu'.

One of ripgrep's most important features is its automatic smart filtering.
It is the most apparent differentiating feature between ripgrep and other tools
like 'grep'. As such, its behavior may be surprising to users that aren't
expecting it.

ripgrep does four types of filtering automatically:

    1. Files and directories that match ignore rules are not searched.
    2. Hidden files and directories are not searched.
    3. Binary files (files with a 'NUL' byte) are not searched.
    4. Symbolic links are not followed.

The first type of filtering is the most sophisticated. ripgrep will attempt to
respect your gitignore rules as faithfully as possible. In particular, this
includes the following:

    * Any global rules, e.g., in '$HOME/.config/git/ignore'.
    * Any rules in '.gitignore'.
    * Any local rules, e.g., in '.git/info/exclude'.

In some cases, ripgrep and git will not always be in sync in terms of which
files are ignored. For example, a file that is ignored via '.gitignore' but is
tracked by git would not be searched by ripgrep even though git tracks it. This
is unlikely to ever be fixed. Instead, you should either make sure your exclude
rules match the files you track precisely, or otherwise use 'git grep' for
search.

Additional ignore rules can be provided outside of a git context:

    * Any rules in '.ignore'.
    * Any rules in '.rgignore'.
    * Any rules in files specified with the '--ignore-file' flag.

The precedence of ignore rules is as follows, with later items overriding
earlier items:

    * Files given by '--ignore-file'.
    * Global gitignore rules, e.g., from '$HOME/.config/git/ignore'.
    * Local rules from '.git/info/exclude'.
    * Rules from '.gitignore'.
    * Rules from '.ignore'.
    * Rules from '.rgignore'.

So for example, if 'foo' were in a '.gitignore' and '!foo' were in an
'.rgignore', then 'foo' would not be ignored since '.rgignore' takes precedence
over '.gitignore'.

Each of the types of filtering can be configured via command line flags:

    * There are several flags starting with '--no-ignore' that toggle which,
      if any, ignore rules are respected. '--no-ignore' by itself will disable
      all of them.
    * '-./--hidden' will force ripgrep to search hidden files and directories.
    * '--binary' will force ripgrep to search binary files.
    * '-L/--follow' will force ripgrep to follow symlinks.

As a special short hand, the `-u` flag can be specified up to three times. Each
additional time incrementally decreases filtering:

    * '-u' is equivalent to '--no-ignore'.
    * '-uu' is equivalent to '--no-ignore --hidden'.
    * '-uuu' is equivalent to '--no-ignore --hidden --binary'.

In particular, 'rg -uuu' should search the same exact content as 'grep -r'.


CONFIGURATION FILES
-------------------
ripgrep supports reading configuration files that change ripgrep's default
behavior. The format of the configuration file is an "rc" style and is very
simple. It is defined by two rules:

    1. Every line is a shell argument, after trimming whitespace.
    2. Lines starting with *#* (optionally preceded by any amount of
       whitespace) are ignored.

ripgrep will look for a single configuration file if and only if the
*RIPGREP_CONFIG_PATH* environment variable is set and is non-empty. ripgrep
will parse shell arguments from this file on startup and will behave as if
the arguments in this file were prepended to any explicit arguments given to
ripgrep on the command line. Note though that the 'rg' command you run must
still be valid. That is, it must always contain at least one pattern at the
command line, even if the configuration file uses the '-e/--regexp' flag.

For example, if your ripgreprc file contained a single line:

    --smart-case

then the following command

    RIPGREP_CONFIG_PATH=wherever/.ripgreprc rg foo

would behave identically to the following command

    rg --smart-case foo

another example is adding types

    --type-add
    web:*.{html,css,js}*

would behave identically to the following command

    rg --type-add 'web:*.{html,css,js}*' foo

same with using globs

    --glob=!.git

or

    --glob
    !.git

would behave identically to the following command

    rg --glob '!.git' foo

ripgrep also provides a flag, *--no-config*, that when present will suppress
any and all support for configuration. This includes any future support
for auto-loading configuration files from pre-determined paths.

Conflicts between configuration files and explicit arguments are handled
exactly like conflicts in the same command line invocation. That is,
this command:

    RIPGREP_CONFIG_PATH=wherever/.ripgreprc rg foo --case-sensitive

is exactly equivalent to

    rg --smart-case foo --case-sensitive

in which case, the *--case-sensitive* flag would override the *--smart-case*
flag.


SHELL COMPLETION
----------------
Shell completion files are included in the release tarball for Bash, Fish, Zsh
and PowerShell.

For *bash*, move *rg.bash* to *$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/bash_completion*
or */etc/bash_completion.d/*.

For *fish*, move *rg.fish* to *$HOME/.config/fish/completions*.

For *zsh*, move *_rg* to one of your *$fpath* directories.


CAVEATS
-------
ripgrep may abort unexpectedly when using default settings if it searches a
file that is simultaneously truncated. This behavior can be avoided by passing
the *--no-mmap* flag which will forcefully disable the use of memory maps in
all cases.

ripgrep may use a large amount of memory depending on a few factors. Firstly,
if ripgrep uses parallelism for search (the default), then the entire output
for each individual file is buffered into memory in order to prevent
interleaving matches in the output. To avoid this, you can disable parallelism
with the *-j1* flag. Secondly, ripgrep always needs to have at least a single
line in memory in order to execute a search. A file with a very long line can
thus cause ripgrep to use a lot of memory. Generally, this only occurs when
searching binary data with the *-a* flag enabled. (When the *-a* flag isn't
enabled, ripgrep will replace all NUL bytes with line terminators, which
typically prevents exorbitant memory usage.) Thirdly, when ripgrep searches
a large file using a memory map, the process will report its resident memory
usage as the size of the file. However, this does not mean ripgrep actually
needed to use that much memory; the operating system will generally handle this
for you.


VERSION
-------
{VERSION}


HOMEPAGE
--------
https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep

Please report bugs and feature requests in the issue tracker. Please do your
best to provide a reproducible test case for bugs. This should include the
corpus being searched, the *rg* command, the actual output and the expected
output. Please also include the output of running the same *rg* command but
with the *--debug* flag.


AUTHORS
-------
Andrew Gallant <jamslam@gmail.com>