Utilities

Excellent Utilities: ripgrep – recursively search directories for a regex pattern

Last Updated on May 22, 2022

Summary

ripgrep is an excellent utility. It’s built on top of Rust’s regex engine. Rust’s regex engine uses finite automata, SIMD and aggressive literal optimizations to make searching extremely quick.

The tool is not going to replace grep. For example it doesn’t conform to any standard such as POSIX. But it’s an incredibly useful utility that offers the features of most similar tools.

Our own tests validate the performance reported by the author’s blog. It’s fast and efficient.

The project has amassed 16.9k GitHub stars. With good reason.

With cross-platform support, use ripgrep on whatever platform you want. And ripgrep is used in other applications such as Visual Studio Code.

Website: github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep
Support: Blog
Developer: Andrew Gallant and many contributors
License: Dual-licensed under MIT or the UNLICENSE

ripgrep is written in Rust. Learn Rust with our recommended free books and free tutorials.

Pages in this article:
Page 1 – Introduction / Installation
Page 2 – In Operation
Page 3 – Summary


Complete list of articles in this series:

Excellent Utilities
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AnanicyShell daemon created to manage processes’ IO and CPU priorities
brootNext gen tree explorer and customizable launcher
CerebroFast application launcher
cheat.shCommunity driven unified cheat sheet
CopyQAdvanced clipboard manager
crocSecurely transfer files and folders from the command-line
DeskreenLive streaming your desktop to a web browser
dufDisk usage utility with more polished presentation than the classic df
ezaA turbo-charged alternative to the venerable ls command
Extension ManagerBrowse, install and manage GNOME Shell Extensions
fdWonderful alternative to the venerable find
fkillKill processes quick and easy
fontpreviewQuickly search and preview fonts
horcruxFile splitter with encryption and redundancy
KoohaSimple screen recorder
KOReaderDocument viewer for a wide variety of file formats
ImagineA simple yet effective image optimization tool
LanguageToolStyle and grammar checker for 30+ languages
Liquid PromptAdaptive prompt for Bash & Zsh
lnavAdvanced log file viewer for the small-scale; great for troubleshooting
lsdLike exa, lsd is a turbo-charged alternative to ls
Mark TextSimple and elegant Markdown editor
McFlyNavigate through your bash shell history
mdlessFormatted and highlighted view of Markdown files
notiMonitors a command or process and triggers a notification
NushellFlexible cross-platform shell with a modern feel
nvitopGPU process management for NVIDIA graphics cards
OCRmyPDFAdd OCR text layer to scanned PDFs
Oh My ZshFramework to manage your Zsh configuration
PaperworkDesigned to simplify the management of your paperwork
pastelGenerate, analyze, convert and manipulate colors
PDF Mix ToolPerform common editing operations on PDF files
pecoSimple interactive filtering tool that's remarkably useful
ripgrepRecursively search directories for a regex pattern
RnoteSketch and take handwritten notes
scrcpyDisplay and control Android devices
StickySimulates the traditional “sticky note” style stationery on your desktop
tldrSimplified and community-driven man pages
tmuxA terminal multiplexer that offers a massive boost to your workflow
TuskAn unofficial Evernote client with bags of potential
UlauncherSublime application launcher
WatsonTrack the time spent on projects
Whoogle SearchSelf-hosted and privacy-focused metasearch engine
ZellijTerminal workspace with batteries included
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Greg Person
Greg Person
4 years ago

To get the recursively search with the standard grep is just add -r, if you want colorized output then add –color and with zgrep you have support for xz, lzma, bzip2, and gzip compressed files.

It’s great to see that people still keeps on inventing the wheel…