RG(1) User Commands 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 -P/--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 CONFIGURATION
FILES below.
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, one can
explicitly specify the directory to search, e.g. rg foo ./.
Like other tools such as ls, ripgrep will alter its output depending on
whether stdout is connected to a tty. By default, when printing a tty,
ripgrep will enable colors, line numbers and a heading format that
lists each matching file path once instead of once per matching line.
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/1.*/regex/#syntax
ripgrep uses byte-oriented regexes, which has some additional
documentation: https://docs.rs/regex/1.*/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 -P/--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
This section documents all flags that ripgrep accepts. Flags are
grouped into categories below according to their function.
Note that many options can be turned on and off. In some cases, those
flags are not listed explicitly 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 (or alias) on the command line. Each flag's
documentation notes whether an inverted flag exists. In all cases, the
flag specified last takes precedence.
INPUT OPTIONS
-e PATTERN, --regexp=PATTERN
A pattern to search for. This option can be provided multiple
times, where all patterns given are searched, in addition to any
patterns provided by -f/--file. Lines matching at least one of the
provided patterns are printed. This flag can also be used when
searching for patterns that start with a dash.
For example, to search for the literal -foo:
rg -e -foo
You can also use the special -- delimiter to indicate that no more
flags will be provided. Namely, the following is equivalent to the
above:
rg -- -foo
When -f/--file or -e/--regexp is used, then ripgrep treats all
positional arguments as files or directories to search.
-f PATTERNFILE, --file=PATTERNFILE
Search for patterns from the given file, with one pattern per line.
When this flag is used multiple times or in combination with the
-e/--regexp flag, then all patterns provided are searched. Empty
pattern lines will match all input lines, and the newline is not
counted as part of the pattern.
A line is printed if and only if it matches at least one of the
patterns.
When PATTERNFILE is -, then stdin will be read for the patterns.
When -f/--file or -e/--regexp is used, then ripgrep treats all
positional arguments as files or directories to search.
--pre=COMMAND
For each input PATH, this flag causes ripgrep to search the
standard output of COMMAND PATH instead of the contents of PATH.
This option expects the COMMAND program to either be a path or to
be available in your PATH. Either an empty string COMMAND or the
--no-pre flag will disable this behavior.
WARNING When this flag is set, ripgrep will unconditionally
spawn a process for every file that is searched.
Therefore, this can incur an unnecessarily large
performance penalty if you don't otherwise need the
flexibility offered by this flag. One possible
mitigation to this is to use the --pre-glob flag to
limit which files a preprocessor is run with.
A preprocessor is not run when ripgrep is searching stdin.
When searching over sets of files that may require one of several
preprocessors, COMMAND should be a wrapper program which first
classifies PATH based on magic numbers/content or based on the PATH
name and then dispatches to an appropriate preprocessor. Each
COMMAND also has its standard input connected to PATH for
convenience.
For example, a shell script for COMMAND might look like:
case "$1" in
*.pdf)
exec pdftotext "$1" -
;;
*)
case $(file "$1") in
*Zstandard*)
exec pzstd -cdq
;;
*)
exec cat
;;
esac
;;
esac
The above script uses pdftotext to convert a PDF file to plain
text. For all other files, the script uses the file utility to
sniff the type of the file based on its contents. If it is a
compressed file in the Zstandard format, then pzstd is used to
decompress the contents to stdout.
This overrides the -z/--search-zip flag.
--pre-glob=GLOB
This flag works in conjunction with the --pre flag. Namely, when
one or more --pre-glob flags are given, then only files that match
the given set of globs will be handed to the command specified by
the --pre flag. Any non-matching files will be searched without
using the preprocessor command.
This flag is useful when searching many files with the --pre flag.
Namely, it provides the ability to avoid process overhead for files
that don't need preprocessing. For example, given the following
shell script, pre-pdftotext:
#!/bin/sh
pdftotext "$1" -
then it is possible to use --pre pre-pdftotext --pre-glob pre-
pdftotext command on files with a .pdf extension.
Multiple --pre-glob flags may be used. Globbing rules match
gitignore globs. Precede a glob with a ! to exclude it.
This flag has no effect if the --pre flag is not used.
-z, --search-zip
This flag instructs ripgrep to search in compressed files.
Currently gzip, bzip2, xz, LZ4, LZMA, Brotli and Zstd files are
supported. This option expects the decompression binaries (such as
gzip) to be available in your PATH. If the required binaries are
not found, then ripgrep will not emit an error messages by default.
Use the --debug flag to see more information.
Note that this flag does not make ripgrep search archive formats as
directory trees. It only makes ripgrep detect compressed files and
then decompress them before searching their contents as it would
any other file.
This overrides the --pre flag.
This flag can be disabled with --no-search-zip.
SEARCH OPTIONS
-s, --case-sensitive
Execute the search case sensitively. This is the default mode.
This is a global option that applies to all patterns given to
ripgrep. Individual patterns can still be matched case
insensitively by using inline regex flags. For example, (?i)abc
will match abc case insensitively even when this flag is used.
This flag overrides the -i/--ignore-case and -S/--smart-case flags.
--crlf
When enabled, ripgrep will treat CRLF (\r\n) as a line terminator
instead of just \n.
Principally, this permits the line anchor assertions ^ and $ in
regex patterns to treat CRLF, CR or LF as line terminators instead
of just LF. Note that they will never match between a CR and a LF.
CRLF is treated as one single line terminator.
When using the default regex engine, CRLF support can also be
enabled inside the pattern with the R flag. For example, (?R:$)
will match just before either CR or LF, but never between CR and
LF.
This flag overrides --null-data.
This flag can be disabled with --no-crlf.
--dfa-size-limit=NUM+SUFFIX?
The upper size limit of the regex DFA. The default limit is
something generous for any single pattern or for many smallish
patterns. This should only be changed on very large regex inputs
where the (slower) fallback regex engine may otherwise be used if
the limit is reached.
The input format accepts suffixes of K, M or G which correspond to
kilobytes, megabytes and gigabytes, respectively. If no suffix is
provided the input is treated as bytes.
-E ENCODING, --encoding=ENCODING
Specify the text encoding that ripgrep will use on all files
searched. The default value is auto, which will cause ripgrep to do
a best effort automatic detection of encoding on a per-file basis.
Automatic detection in this case only applies to files that begin
with a UTF-8 or UTF-16 byte-order mark (BOM). No other automatic
detection is performed. One can also specify none which will then
completely disable BOM sniffing and always result in searching the
raw bytes, including a BOM if it's present, regardless of its
encoding.
Other supported values can be found in the list of labels here:
https://encoding.spec.whatwg.org/#concept-encoding-get.
For more details on encoding and how ripgrep deals with it, see
GUIDE.md.
The encoding detection that ripgrep uses can be reverted to its
automatic mode via the --no-encoding flag.
--engine=ENGINE
Specify which regular expression engine to use. When you choose a
regex engine, it applies that choice for every regex provided to
ripgrep (e.g., via multiple -e/--regexp or -f/--file flags).
Accepted values are default, pcre2, or auto.
The default value is default, which is usually the fastest and
should be good for most use cases. The pcre2 engine is generally
useful when you want to use features such as look-around or
backreferences. auto will dynamically choose between supported
regex engines depending on the features used in a pattern on a best
effort basis.
Note that the pcre2 engine is an optional ripgrep feature. If PCRE2
wasn't included in your build of ripgrep, then using this flag will
result in ripgrep printing an error message and exiting.
This overrides previous uses of the -P/--pcre2 and --auto-hybrid-
regex flags.
-F, --fixed-strings
Treat all patterns as literals instead of as regular expressions.
When this flag is used, special regular expression meta characters
such as .(){}*+ should not need be escaped.
This flag can be disabled with --no-fixed-strings.
-i, --ignore-case
When this flag is provided, all patterns will be searched case
insensitively. The case insensitivity rules used by ripgrep's
default regex engine conform to Unicode's "simple" case folding
rules.
This is a global option that applies to all patterns given to
ripgrep. Individual patterns can still be matched case sensitively
by using inline regex flags. For example, (?-i)abc will match abc
case sensitively even when this flag is used.
This flag overrides -s/--case-sensitive and -S/--smart-case.
-v, --invert-match
This flag inverts matching. That is, instead of printing lines that
match, ripgrep will print lines that don't match.
Note that this only inverts line-by-line matching. For example,
combining this flag with -l/--files-with-matches will emit files
that contain any lines that do not match the patterns given. That's
not the same as, for example, --files-without-match, which will
emit files that do not contain any matching lines.
This flag can be disabled with --no-invert-match.
-x, --line-regexp
When enabled, ripgrep will only show matches surrounded by line
boundaries. This is equivalent to surrounding every pattern with ^
and $. In other words, this only prints lines where the entire line
participates in a match.
This overrides the -w/--word-regexp flag.
-m NUM, --max-count=NUM
Limit the number of matching lines per file searched to NUM.
Note that 0 is a legal value but not likely to be useful. When
used, ripgrep won't search anything.
--mmap
When enabled, ripgrep will search using memory maps when possible.
This is enabled by default when ripgrep thinks it will be faster.
Memory map searching cannot be used in all circumstances. For
example, when searching virtual files or streams likes stdin. In
such cases, memory maps will not be used even when this flag is
enabled.
Note that ripgrep may abort unexpectedly when memory maps are used
if it searches a file that is simultaneously truncated. Users can
opt out of this possibility by disabling memory maps.
This flag can be disabled with --no-mmap.
-U, --multiline
This flag enable searching across multiple lines.
When multiline mode is enabled, ripgrep will lift the restriction
that a match cannot include a line terminator. For example, when
multiline mode is not enabled (the default), then the regex \p{any}
will match any Unicode codepoint other than \n. Similarly, the
regex \n is explicitly forbidden, and if you try to use it, ripgrep
will return an error. However, when multiline mode is enabled,
\p{any} will match any Unicode codepoint, including \n, and regexes
like \n are permitted.
An important caveat is that multiline mode does not change the
match semantics of .. Namely, in most regex matchers, a . will by
default match any character other than \n, and this is true in
ripgrep as well. In order to make . match \n, you must enable the
"dot all" flag inside the regex. For example, both (?s). and (?s:.)
have the same semantics, where . will match any character,
including \n. Alternatively, the --multiline-dotall flag may be
passed to make the "dot all" behavior the default. This flag only
applies when multiline search is enabled.
There is no limit on the number of the lines that a single match
can span.
WARNING: Because of how the underlying regex engine works,
multiline searches may be slower than normal line-oriented
searches, and they may also use more memory. In particular, when
multiline mode is enabled, ripgrep requires that each file it
searches is laid out contiguously in memory (either by reading it
onto the heap or by memory-mapping it). Things that cannot be
memory-mapped (such as stdin) will be consumed until EOF before
searching can begin. In general, ripgrep will only do these things
when necessary. Specifically, if the -U/--multiline flag is
provided but the regex does not contain patterns that would match
\n characters, then ripgrep will automatically avoid reading each
file into memory before searching it. Nevertheless, if you only
care about matches spanning at most one line, then it is always
better to disable multiline mode.
This overrides the --stop-on-nonmatch flag.
This flag can be disabled with --no-multiline.
--multiline-dotall
This flag enables "dot all" mode in all regex patterns. This causes
. to match line terminators when multiline searching is enabled.
This flag has no effect if multiline searching isn't enabled with
the -U/--multiline flag.
Normally, a . will match any character except line terminators.
While this behavior typically isn't relevant for line-oriented
matching (since matches can span at most one line), this can be
useful when searching with the -U/--multiline flag. By default,
multiline mode runs without "dot all" mode enabled.
This flag is generally intended to be used in an alias or your
ripgrep config file if you prefer "dot all" semantics by default.
Note that regardless of whether this flag is used, "dot all"
semantics can still be controlled via inline flags in the regex
pattern itself, e.g., (?s:.) always enables "dot all" whereas
(?-s:.) always disables "dot all". Moreover, you can use character
classes like \p{any} to match any Unicode codepoint regardless of
whether "dot all" mode is enabled or not.
This flag can be disabled with --no-multiline-dotall.
--no-unicode
This flag disables Unicode mode for all patterns given to ripgrep.
By default, ripgrep will enable "Unicode mode" in all of its
regexes. This has a number of consequences:
• . will only match valid UTF-8 encoded Unicode scalar values.
• Classes like \w, \s, \d are all Unicode aware and much bigger
than their ASCII only versions.
• Case insensitive matching will use Unicode case folding.
• A large array of classes like \p{Emoji} are available. (Although
the specific set of classes available varies based on the regex
engine. In general, the default regex engine has more classes
available to it.)
• Word boundaries (\b and \B) use the Unicode definition of a word
character.
In some cases it can be desirable to turn these things off. This
flag will do exactly that. For example, Unicode mode can sometimes
have a negative impact on performance, especially when things like
\w are used frequently (including via bounded repetitions like
\w{100}) when only their ASCII interpretation is needed.
This flag can be disabled with --unicode.
--null-data
Enabling this flag causes ripgrep to use NUL as a line terminator
instead of the default of \n.
This is useful when searching large binary files that would
otherwise have very long lines if \n were used as the line
terminator. In particular, ripgrep requires that, at a minimum,
each line must fit into memory. Using NUL instead can be a useful
stopgap to keep memory requirements low and avoid OOM (out of
memory) conditions.
This is also useful for processing NUL delimited data, such as that
emitted when using ripgrep's -0/--null flag or find's --print0
flag.
Using this flag implies -a/--text. It also overrides --crlf.
-P, --pcre2
When this flag is present, ripgrep will use the PCRE2 regex engine
instead of its default regex engine.
This is generally useful when you want to use features such as
look-around or backreferences.
Using this flag is the same as passing --engine=pcre2. Users may
instead elect to use --engine=auto to ask ripgrep to automatically
select the right regex engine based on the patterns given. This
flag and the --engine flag override one another.
Note that PCRE2 is an optional ripgrep feature. If PCRE2 wasn't
included in your build of ripgrep, then using this flag will result
in ripgrep printing an error message and exiting. PCRE2 may also
have worse user experience in some cases, since it has fewer
introspection APIs than ripgrep's default regex engine. For
example, if you use a \n in a PCRE2 regex without the
-U/--multiline flag, then ripgrep will silently fail to match
anything instead of reporting an error immediately (like it does
with the default regex engine).
This flag can be disabled with --no-pcre2.
--regex-size-limit=NUM+SUFFIX?
The size limit of the compiled regex, where the compiled regex
generally corresponds to a single object in memory that can match
all of the patterns provided to ripgrep. The default limit is
generous enough that most reasonable patterns (or even a small
number of them) should fit.
This useful to change when you explicitly want to let ripgrep spend
potentially much more time and/or memory building a regex matcher.
The input format accepts suffixes of K, M or G which correspond to
kilobytes, megabytes and gigabytes, respectively. If no suffix is
provided the input is treated as bytes.
-S, --smart-case
This flag instructs ripgrep to searches case insensitively if the
pattern is all lowercase. Otherwise, ripgrep will search case
sensitively.
A pattern is considered all lowercase if both of the following
rules hold:
• First, the pattern contains at least one literal character. For
example, a\w contains a literal (a) but just \w does not.
• Second, of the literals in the pattern, none of them are
considered to be uppercase according to Unicode. For example,
foo\pL has no uppercase literals but Foo\pL does.
This overrides the -s/--case-sensitive and -i/--ignore-case flags.
--stop-on-nonmatch
Enabling this option will cause ripgrep to stop reading a file once
it encounters a non-matching line after it has encountered a
matching line. This is useful if it is expected that all matches
in a given file will be on sequential lines, for example due to the
lines being sorted.
This overrides the -U/--multiline flag.
-a, --text
This flag instructs ripgrep to search binary files as if they were
text. When this flag is present, ripgrep's binary file detection is
disabled. This means that when a binary file is searched, its
contents may be printed if there is a match. This may cause escape
codes to be printed that alter the behavior of your terminal.
When binary file detection is enabled, it is imperfect. In general,
it uses a simple heuristic. If a NUL byte is seen during search,
then the file is considered binary and searching stops (unless this
flag is present). Alternatively, if the --binary flag is used,
then ripgrep will only quit when it sees a NUL byte after it sees a
match (or searches the entire file).
This flag overrides the --binary flag.
This flag can be disabled with --no-text.
-j NUM, --threads=NUM
This flag sets the approximate number of threads to use. A value of
0 (which is the default) causes ripgrep to choose the thread count
using heuristics.
-w, --word-regexp
When enabled, ripgrep will only show matches surrounded by word
boundaries. This is equivalent to surrounding every pattern with
\b{start-half} and \b{end-half}.
This overrides the -x/--line-regexp flag.
--auto-hybrid-regex
DEPRECATED. Use --engine instead.
When this flag is used, ripgrep will dynamically choose between
supported regex engines depending on the features used in a
pattern. When ripgrep chooses a regex engine, it applies that
choice for every regex provided to ripgrep (e.g., via multiple
-e/--regexp or -f/--file flags).
As an example of how this flag might behave, ripgrep will attempt
to use its default finite automata based regex engine whenever the
pattern can be successfully compiled with that regex engine. If
PCRE2 is enabled and if the pattern given could not be compiled
with the default regex engine, then PCRE2 will be automatically
used for searching. If PCRE2 isn't available, then this flag has no
effect because there is only one regex engine to choose from.
In the future, ripgrep may adjust its heuristics for how it decides
which regex engine to use. In general, the heuristics will be
limited to a static analysis of the patterns, and not to any
specific runtime behavior observed while searching files.
The primary downside of using this flag is that it may not always
be obvious which regex engine ripgrep uses, and thus, the match
semantics or performance profile of ripgrep may subtly and
unexpectedly change. However, in many cases, all regex engines will
agree on what constitutes a match and it can be nice to
transparently support more advanced regex features like look-around
and backreferences without explicitly needing to enable them.
This flag can be disabled with --no-auto-hybrid-regex.
--no-pcre2-unicode
DEPRECATED. Use --no-unicode instead.
Note that Unicode mode is enabled by default.
This flag can be disabled with --pcre2-unicode.
FILTER OPTIONS
--binary
Enabling this flag will cause ripgrep to search binary files. By
default, ripgrep attempts to automatically skip binary files in
order to improve the relevance of results and make the search
faster.
Binary files are heuristically detected based on whether they
contain a NUL byte or not. By default (without this flag set), once
a NUL byte is seen, ripgrep will stop searching the file. Usually,
NUL bytes occur in the beginning of most binary files. If a NUL
byte occurs after a match, then ripgrep will not print the match,
stop searching that file, and emit a warning that some matches are
being suppressed.
In contrast, when this flag is provided, ripgrep will continue
searching a file even if a NUL byte is found. In particular, if a
NUL byte is found then ripgrep will continue searching until either
a match is found or the end of the file is reached, whichever comes
sooner. If a match is found, then ripgrep will stop and print a
warning saying that the search stopped prematurely.
If you want ripgrep to search a file without any special NUL byte
handling at all (and potentially print binary data to stdout), then
you should use the -a/--text flag.
The --binary flag is a flag for controlling ripgrep's automatic
filtering mechanism. As such, it does not need to be used when
searching a file explicitly or when searching stdin. That is, it is
only applicable when recursively searching a directory.
When the -u/--unrestricted flag is provided for a third time, then
this flag is automatically enabled.
This flag overrides the -a/--text flag.
This flag can be disabled with --no-binary.
-L, --follow
This flag instructs ripgrep to follow symbolic links while
traversing directories. This behavior is disabled by default. Note
that ripgrep will check for symbolic link loops and report errors
if it finds one. ripgrep will also report errors for broken links.
To suppress error messages, use the --no-messages flag.
This flag can be disabled with --no-follow.
-g GLOB, --glob=GLOB
Include or exclude files and directories for searching that match
the given glob. This always overrides any other ignore logic.
Multiple glob flags may be used. Globbing rules match .gitignore
globs. Precede a glob with a ! to exclude it. If multiple globs
match a file or directory, the glob given later in the command line
takes precedence.
As an extension, globs support specifying alternatives: -g
'ab{c,d}*' is equivalent to -g abc -g abd. Empty alternatives like
-g 'ab{,c}' are not currently supported. Note that this syntax
extension is also currently enabled in gitignore files, even though
this syntax isn't supported by git itself. ripgrep may disable this
syntax extension in gitignore files, but it will always remain
available via the -g/--glob flag.
When this flag is set, every file and directory is applied to it to
test for a match. For example, if you only want to search in a
particular directory foo, then -g foo is incorrect because foo/bar
does not match the glob foo. Instead, you should use -g 'foo/**'.
--glob-case-insensitive
Process all glob patterns given with the -g/--glob flag case
insensitively. This effectively treats -g/--glob as --iglob.
This flag can be disabled with --no-glob-case-insensitive.
-., --hidden
Search hidden files and directories. By default, hidden files and
directories are skipped. Note that if a hidden file or a directory
is whitelisted in an ignore file, then it will be searched even if
this flag isn't provided. Similarly if a hidden file or directory
is given explicitly as an argumnet to ripgrep.
A file or directory is considered hidden if its base name starts
with a dot character (.). On operating systems which support a
"hidden" file attribute, like Windows, files with this attribute
are also considered hidden.
This flag can be disabled with --no-hidden.
--iglob=GLOB
Include or exclude files and directories for searching that match
the given glob. This always overrides any other ignore logic.
Multiple glob flags may be used. Globbing rules match .gitignore
globs. Precede a glob with a ! to exclude it. If multiple globs
match a file or directory, the glob given later in the command line
takes precedence. Globs used via this flag are matched case
insensitively.
--ignore-file=PATH
Specifies a path to one or more gitignore formatted rules files.
These patterns are applied after the patterns found in .gitignore,
.rgignore and .ignore are applied and are matched relative to the
current working directory. Multiple additional ignore files can be
specified by using this flag repeatedly. When specifying multiple
ignore files, earlier files have lower precedence than later files.
If you are looking for a way to include or exclude files and
directories directly on the command line, then use -g/--glob
instead.
--ignore-file-case-insensitive
Process ignore files (.gitignore, .ignore, etc.) case
insensitively. Note that this comes with a performance penalty and
is most useful on case insensitive file systems (such as Windows).
This flag can be disabled with --no-ignore-file-case-insensitive.
-d NUM, --max-depth=NUM
This flag limits the depth of directory traversal to NUM levels
beyond the paths given. A value of 0 only searches the explicitly
given paths themselves.
For example, rg --max-depth 0 dir/ is a no-op because dir/ will not
be descended into. rg --max-depth 1 dir/ will search only the
direct children of dir.
An alternative spelling for this flag is --maxdepth.
--max-filesize=NUM+SUFFIX?
Ignore files larger than NUM in size. This does not apply to
directories.
The input format accepts suffixes of K, M or G which correspond to
kilobytes, megabytes and gigabytes, respectively. If no suffix is
provided the input is treated as bytes.
Examples: --max-filesize 50K or --max-filesize 80M.
--no-ignore
When set, ignore files such as .gitignore, .ignore and .rgignore
will not be respected. This implies --no-ignore-dot, --no-ignore-
exclude, --no-ignore-global, --no-ignore-parent and --no-ignore-
vcs.
This does not imply --no-ignore-files, since --ignore-file is
specified explicitly as a command line argument.
When given only once, the -u/--unrestricted flag is identical in
behavior to this flag and can be considered an alias. However,
subsequent -u/--unrestricted flags have additional effects.
This flag can be disabled with --ignore.
--no-ignore-dot
Don't respect filter rules from .ignore or .rgignore files.
This does not impact whether ripgrep will ignore files and
directories whose names begin with a dot. For that, see the
-./--hidden flag. This flag also does not impact whether filter
rules from .gitignore files are respected.
This flag can be disabled with --ignore-dot.
--no-ignore-exclude
Don't respect filter rules from files that are manually configured
for the repository. For example, this includes git's
.git/info/exclude.
This flag can be disabled with --ignore-exclude.
--no-ignore-files
When set, any --ignore-file flags, even ones that come after this
flag, are ignored.
This flag can be disabled with --ignore-files.
--no-ignore-global
Don't respect filter rules from ignore files that come from
"global" sources such as git's core.excludesFile configuration
option (which defaults to $HOME/.config/git/ignore).
This flag can be disabled with --ignore-global.
--no-ignore-parent
When this flag is set, filter rules from ignore files found in
parent directories are not respected. By default, ripgrep will
ascend the parent directories of the current working directory to
look for any applicable ignore files that should be applied. In
some cases this may not be desirable.
This flag can be disabled with --ignore-parent.
--no-ignore-vcs
When given, filter rules from source control ignore files (e.g.,
.gitignore) are not respected. By default, ripgrep respects git's
ignore rules for automatic filtering. In some cases, it may not be
desirable to respect the source control's ignore rules and instead
only respect rules in .ignore or .rgignore.
This flag implies --no-ignore-parent for source control ignore
files as well.
This flag can be disabled with --ignore-vcs.
--no-require-git
When this flag is given, source control ignore files such as
.gitignore are respected even if no git repository is present.
By default, ripgrep will only respect filter rules from source
control ignore files when ripgrep detects that the search is
executed inside a source control repository. For example, when a
.git directory is observed.
This flag relaxes the default restriction. For example, it might be
useful when the contents of a git repository are stored or copied
somewhere, but where the repository state is absent.
This flag can be disabled with --require-git.
--one-file-system
When enabled, ripgrep will not cross file system boundaries
relative to where the search started from.
Note that this applies to each path argument given to ripgrep. For
example, in the command
rg --one-file-system /foo/bar /quux/baz
ripgrep will search both /foo/bar and /quux/baz even if they are on
different file systems, but will not cross a file system boundary
when traversing each path's directory tree.
This is similar to find's -xdev or -mount flag.
This flag can be disabled with --no-one-file-system.
-t TYPE, --type=TYPE
This flag limits ripgrep to searching files matching TYPE. Multiple
-t/--type flags may be provided.
This flag supports the special value all, which will behave as if
-t/--type was provided for every file type supported by ripgrep
(including any custom file types). The end result is that
--type=all causes ripgrep to search in "whitelist" mode, where it
will only search files it recognizes via its type definitions.
Note that this flag has lower precedence than both the -g/--glob
flag and any rules found in ignore files.
To see the list of available file types, use the --type-list flag.
-T TYPE, --type-not=TYPE
Do not search files matching TYPE. Multiple -T/--type-not flags may
be provided. Use the --type-list flag to list all available types.
This flag supports the special value all, which will behave as if
-T/--type-not was provided for every file type supported by ripgrep
(including any custom file types). The end result is that
--type-not=all causes ripgrep to search in "blacklist" mode, where
it will only search files that are unrecognized by its type
definitions.
To see the list of available file types, use the --type-list flag.
--type-add=TYPESPEC
This flag adds a new glob for a particular file type. Only one glob
can be added at a time. Multiple --type-add flags can be provided.
Unless --type-clear is used, globs are added to any existing globs
defined inside of ripgrep.
Note that this must be passed to every invocation of ripgrep. Type
settings are not persisted. See CONFIGURATION FILES for a
workaround.
Example:
rg --type-add 'foo:*.foo' -tfoo PATTERN
This flag can also be used to include rules from other types with
the special include directive. The include directive permits
specifying one or more other type names (separated by a comma) that
have been defined and its rules will automatically be imported into
the type specified. For example, to create a type called src that
matches C++, Python and Markdown files, one can use:
--type-add 'src:include:cpp,py,md'
Additional glob rules can still be added to the src type by using
this flag again:
--type-add 'src:include:cpp,py,md' --type-add 'src:*.foo'
Note that type names must consist only of Unicode letters or
numbers. Punctuation characters are not allowed.
--type-clear=TYPE
Clear the file type globs previously defined for TYPE. This clears
any previously defined globs for the TYPE, but globs can be added
after this flag.
Note that this must be passed to every invocation of ripgrep. Type
settings are not persisted. See CONFIGURATION FILES for a
workaround.
-u, --unrestricted
This flag reduces the level of "smart" filtering. Repeated uses (up
to 3) reduces the filtering even more. When repeated three times,
ripgrep will search every file in a directory tree.
A single -u/--unrestricted flag is equivalent to --no-ignore. Two
-u/--unrestricted flags is equivalent to --no-ignore -./--hidden.
Three -u/--unrestricted flags is equivalent to --no-ignore
-./--hidden --binary.
The only filtering ripgrep still does when -uuu is given is to skip
symbolic links and to avoid printing matches from binary files.
Symbolic links can be followed via the -L/--follow flag, and binary
files can be treated as text files via the -a/--text flag.
OUTPUT OPTIONS
-A NUM, --after-context=NUM
Show NUM lines after each match.
This overrides the --passthru flag and partially overrides the
-C/--context flag.
-B NUM, --before-context=NUM
Show NUM lines before each match.
This overrides the --passthru flag and partially overrides the
-C/--context flag.
--block-buffered
When enabled, ripgrep will use block buffering. That is, whenever a
matching line is found, it will be written to an in-memory buffer
and will not be written to stdout until the buffer reaches a
certain size. This is the default when ripgrep's stdout is
redirected to a pipeline or a file. When ripgrep's stdout is
connected to a tty, line buffering will be used by default. Forcing
block buffering can be useful when dumping a large amount of
contents to a tty.
This overrides the --line-buffered flag.
This flag can be disabled with --no-block-buffered.
-b, --byte-offset
Print the 0-based byte offset within the input file before each
line of output. If -o/--only-matching is specified, print the
offset of the matched text itself.
If ripgrep does transcoding, then the byte offset is in terms of
the result of transcoding and not the original data. This applies
similarly to other transformations on the data, such as
decompression or a --pre filter.
This flag can be disabled with --no-byte-offset.
--color=WHEN
This flag controls when to use colors. The default setting is auto,
which means ripgrep will try to guess when to use colors. For
example, if ripgrep is printing to a tty, then it will use colors,
but if it is redirected to a file or a pipe, then it will suppress
color output.
ripgrep will suppress color output by default in some other
circumstances as well. These include, but are not limited to:
• When the TERM environment variable is not set or set to dumb.
• When the NO_COLOR environment variable is set (regardless of
value).
• When flags that imply no use for colors are given. For example,
--vimgrep and --json.
The possible values for this flag are:
never Colors will never be used.
auto The default. ripgrep tries to be smart.
always Colors will always be used regardless of where output is
sent.
ansi Like 'always', but emits ANSI escapes (even in a Windows
console).
This flag also controls whether hyperlinks are emitted. For
example, when a hyperlink format is specified, hyperlinks won't be
used when color is suppressed. If one wants to emit hyperlinks but
no colors, then one must use the --colors flag to manually set all
color styles to none:
--colors 'path:none' \
--colors 'line:none' \
--colors 'column:none' \
--colors 'match:none'
--colors=COLOR_SPEC
This flag specifies color settings for use in the output. This flag
may be provided multiple times. Settings are applied iteratively.
Pre-existing color labels are limited to one of eight choices: red,
blue, green, cyan, magenta, yellow, white and black. Styles are
limited to nobold, bold, nointense, intense, nounderline or
underline.
The format of the flag is {type}:{attribute}:{value}. type should
be one of path, line, column or match. attribute can be fg, bg or
style. value is either a color (for fg and bg) or a text style. A
special format, {type}:none, will clear all color settings for
type.
For example, the following command will change the match color to
magenta and the background color for line numbers to yellow:
rg --colors 'match:fg:magenta' --colors 'line:bg:yellow'
Extended colors can be used for value when the tty supports ANSI
color sequences. These are specified as either x (256-color) or
x,x,x (24-bit truecolor) where x is a number between 0 and 255
inclusive. x may be given as a normal decimal number or a
hexadecimal number, which is prefixed by 0x.
For example, the following command will change the match background
color to that represented by the rgb value (0,128,255):
rg --colors 'match:bg:0,128,255'
or, equivalently,
rg --colors 'match:bg:0x0,0x80,0xFF'
Note that the intense and nointense styles will have no effect when
used alongside these extended color codes.
--column
Show column numbers (1-based). This only shows the column numbers
for the first match on each line. This does not try to account for
Unicode. One byte is equal to one column. This implies -n/--line-
number.
When -o/--only-matching is used, then the column numbers written
correspond to the start of each match.
This flag can be disabled with --no-column.
-C NUM, --context=NUM
Show NUM lines before and after each match. This is equivalent to
providing both the -B/--before-context and -A/--after-context flags
with the same value.
This overrides the --passthru flag. The -A/--after-context and
-B/--before-context flags both partially override this flag,
regardless of the order. For example, -A2 -C1 is equivalent to -A2
-B1.
--context-separator=SEPARATOR
The string used to separate non-contiguous context lines in the
output. This is only used when one of the context flags is used
(that is, -A/--after-context, -B/--before-context or -C/--context).
Escape sequences like \x7F or \t may be used. The default value is
--.
When the context separator is set to an empty string, then a line
break is still inserted. To completely disable context separators,
use the --no-context-separator flag.
--field-context-separator=SEPARATOR
Set the field context separator. This separator is only used when
printing contextual lines. It is used to delimit file paths, line
numbers, columns and the contextual line itself. The separator may
be any number of bytes, including zero. Escape sequences like \x7F
or \t may be used.
The - character is the default value.
--field-match-separator=SEPARATOR
Set the field match separator. This separator is only used when
printing matching lines. It is used to delimit file paths, line
numbers, columns and the matching line itself. The separator may be
any number of bytes, including zero. Escape sequences like \x7F or
\t may be used.
The : character is the default value.
--heading
This flag prints the file path above clusters of matches from each
file instead of printing the file path as a prefix for each matched
line.
This is the default mode when printing to a tty.
When stdout is not a tty, then ripgrep will default to the standard
grep-like format. Once can force this format in Unix-like
environments by piping the output of ripgrep to cat. For example,
rg foo | cat.
This flag can be disabled with --no-heading.
-h, --help
This flag prints the help output for ripgrep.
Unlike most other flags, the behavior of the short flag, -h, and
the long flag, --help, is different. The short flag will show a
condensed help output while the long flag will show a verbose help
output. The verbose help output has complete documentation, where
as the condensed help output will show only a single line for every
flag.
--hostname-bin=COMMAND
This flag controls how ripgrep determines this system's hostname.
The flag's value should correspond to an executable (either a path
or something that can be found via your system's PATH environment
variable). When set, ripgrep will run this executable, with no
arguments, and treat its output (with leading and trailing
whitespace stripped) as your system's hostname.
When not set (the default, or the empty string), ripgrep will try
to automatically detect your system's hostname. On Unix, this
corresponds to calling gethostname. On Windows, this corresponds to
calling GetComputerNameExW to fetch the system's "physical DNS
hostname."
ripgrep uses your system's hostname for producing hyperlinks.
--hyperlink-format=FORMAT
Set the format of hyperlinks to use when printing results.
Hyperlinks make certain elements of ripgrep's output, such as file
paths, clickable. This generally only works in terminal emulators
that support OSC-8 hyperlinks. For example, the format
file://{host}{path} will emit an RFC 8089 hyperlink. To see the
format that ripgrep is using, pass the --debug flag.
Alternatively, a format string may correspond to one of the
following aliases: default, none, file, grep+, kitty, macvim,
textmate, vscode, vscode-insiders, vscodium. The alias will be
replaced with a format string that is intended to work for the
corresponding application.
The following variables are available in the format string:
{path} Required. This is replaced with a path to a matching
file. The path is guaranteed to be absolute and percent
encoded such that it is valid to put into a URI. Note
that a path is guaranteed to start with a /.
{host} Optional. This is replaced with your system's hostname.
On Unix, this corresponds to calling gethostname. On
Windows, this corresponds to calling GetComputerNameExW
to fetch the system's "physical DNS hostname."
Alternatively, if --hostname-bin was provided, then the
hostname returned from the output of that program will
be returned. If no hostname could be found, then this
variable is replaced with the empty string.
{line} Optional. If appropriate, this is replaced with the
line number of a match. If no line number is available
(for example, if --no-line-number was given), then it
is automatically replaced with the value 1.
{column} Optional, but requires the presence of {line}. If
appropriate, this is replaced with the column number of
a match. If no column number is available (for example,
if --no-column was given), then it is automatically
replaced with the value 1.
{wslprefix} Optional. This is a special value that is set to
wsl$/WSL_DISTRO_NAME, where WSL_DISTRO_NAME corresponds
to the value of the equivalent environment variable. If
the system is not Unix or if the WSL_DISTRO_NAME
environment variable is not set, then this is replaced
with the empty string.
A format string may be empty. An empty format string is equivalent
to the none alias. In this case, hyperlinks will be disabled.
At present, ripgrep does not enable hyperlinks by default. Users
must opt into them. If you aren't sure what format to use, try
default.
Like colors, when ripgrep detects that stdout is not connected to a
tty, then hyperlinks are automatically disabled, regardless of the
value of this flag. Users can pass --color=always to forcefully
emit hyperlinks.
Note that hyperlinks are only written when a path is also in the
output and colors are enabled. To write hyperlinks without colors,
you'll need to configure ripgrep to not colorize anything without
actually disabling all ANSI escape codes completely:
--colors 'path:none' \
--colors 'line:none' \
--colors 'column:none' \
--colors 'match:none'
ripgrep works this way because it treats the --color flag as a
proxy for whether ANSI escape codes should be used at all. This
means that environment variables like NO_COLOR=1 and TERM=dumb not
only disable colors, but hyperlinks as well. Similarly, colors and
hyperlinks are disabled when ripgrep is not writing to a tty.
(Unless one forces the issue by setting --color=always.)
If you're searching a file directly, for example:
rg foo path/to/file
then hyperlinks will not be emitted since the path given does not
appear in the output. To make the path appear, and thus also a
hyperlink, use the -H/--with-filename flag.
For more information on hyperlinks in terminal emulators, see:
https://gist.github.com/egmontkob/eb114294efbcd5adb1944c9f3cb5feda
--include-zero
When used with -c/--count or --count-matches, this causes ripgrep
to print the number of matches for each file even if there were
zero matches. This is disabled by default but can be enabled to
make ripgrep behave more like grep.
This flag can be disabled with --no-include-zero.
--line-buffered
When enabled, ripgrep will always use line buffering. That is,
whenever a matching line is found, it will be flushed to stdout
immediately. This is the default when ripgrep's stdout is connected
to a tty, but otherwise, ripgrep will use block buffering, which is
typically faster. This flag forces ripgrep to use line buffering
even if it would otherwise use block buffering. This is typically
useful in shell pipelines, for example:
tail -f something.log | rg foo --line-buffered | rg bar
This overrides the --block-buffered flag.
This flag can be disabled with --no-line-buffered.
-n, --line-number
Show line numbers (1-based).
This is enabled by default when stdout is connected to a tty.
This flag can be disabled by -N/--no-line-number.
-N, --no-line-number
Suppress line numbers.
Line numbers are off by default when stdout is not connected to a
tty.
Line numbers can be forcefully turned on by -n/--line-number.
-M NUM, --max-columns=NUM
When given, ripgrep will omit lines longer than this limit in
bytes. Instead of printing long lines, only the number of matches
in that line is printed.
When this flag is omitted or is set to 0, then it has no effect.
--max-columns-preview
Prints a preview for lines exceeding the configured max column
limit.
When the -M/--max-columns flag is used, ripgrep will by default
completely replace any line that is too long with a message
indicating that a matching line was removed. When this flag is
combined with -M/--max-columns, a preview of the line
(corresponding to the limit size) is shown instead, where the part
of the line exceeding the limit is not shown.
If the -M/--max-columns flag is not set, then this has no effect.
This flag can be disabled with --no-max-columns-preview.
-0, --null
Whenever a file path is printed, follow it with a NUL byte. This
includes printing file paths before matches, and when printing a
list of matching files such as with -c/--count, -l/--files-with-
matches and --files. This option is useful for use with xargs.
-o, --only-matching
Print only the matched (non-empty) parts of a matching line, with
each such part on a separate output line.
--path-separator=SEPARATOR
Set the path separator to use when printing file paths. This
defaults to your platform's path separator, which is / on Unix and
\ on Windows. This flag is intended for overriding the default
when the environment demands it (e.g., cygwin). A path separator is
limited to a single byte.
Setting this flag to an empty string reverts it to its default
behavior. That is, the path separator is automatically chosen based
on the environment.
--passthru
Print both matching and non-matching lines.
Another way to achieve a similar effect is by modifying your
pattern to match the empty string. For example, if you are
searching using rg foo, then using rg '^|foo' instead will emit
every line in every file searched, but only occurrences of foo will
be highlighted. This flag enables the same behavior without
needing to modify the pattern.
An alternative spelling for this flag is --passthrough.
This overrides the -C/--context, -A/--after-context and
-B/--before-context flags.
-p, --pretty
This is a convenience alias for --color=always --heading
--line-number. This flag is useful when you still want pretty
output even if you're piping ripgrep to another program or file.
For example: rg -p foo | less -R.
-q, --quiet
Do not print anything to stdout. If a match is found in a file,
then ripgrep will stop searching. This is useful when ripgrep is
used only for its exit code (which will be an error code if no
matches are found).
When --files is used, ripgrep will stop finding files after finding
the first file that does not match any ignore rules.
-r REPLACEMENT, --replace=REPLACEMENT
Replaces every match with the text given when printing results.
Neither this flag nor any other ripgrep flag will modify your
files.
Capture group indices (e.g., $5) and names (e.g., $foo) are
supported in the replacement string. Capture group indices are
numbered based on the position of the opening parenthesis of the
group, where the leftmost such group is $1. The special $0 group
corresponds to the entire match.
The name of a group is formed by taking the longest string of
letters, numbers and underscores (i.e. [_0-9A-Za-z]) after the $.
For example, $1a will be replaced with the group named 1a, not the
group at index 1. If the group's name contains characters that
aren't letters, numbers or underscores, or you want to immediately
follow the group with another string, the name should be put inside
braces. For example, ${1}a will take the content of the group at
index 1 and append a to the end of it.
If an index or name does not refer to a valid capture group, it
will be replaced with an empty string.
In shells such as Bash and zsh, you should wrap the pattern in
single quotes instead of double quotes. Otherwise, capture group
indices will be replaced by expanded shell variables which will
most likely be empty.
To write a literal $, use $$.
Note that the replacement by default replaces each match, and not
the entire line. To replace the entire line, you should match the
entire line.
This flag can be used with the -o/--only-matching flag.
--sort=SORTBY
This flag enables sorting of results in ascending order. The
possible values for this flag are:
none (Default) Do not sort results. Fastest. Can be multi-
threaded.
path Sort by file path. Always single-threaded. The order is
determined by sorting files in each directory entry
during traversal. This means that given the files a/b
and a+, the latter will sort after the former even
though + would normally sort before /.
modified Sort by the last modified time on a file. Always
single-threaded.
accessed Sort by the last accessed time on a file. Always
single-threaded.
created Sort by the creation time on a file. Always single-
threaded.
If the chosen (manually or by-default) sorting criteria isn't
available on your system (for example, creation time is not
available on ext4 file systems), then ripgrep will attempt to
detect this, print an error and exit without searching.
To sort results in reverse or descending order, use the --sortr
flag. Also, this flag overrides --sortr.
Note that sorting results currently always forces ripgrep to
abandon parallelism and run in a single thread.
--sortr=SORTBY
This flag enables sorting of results in descending order. The
possible values for this flag are:
none (Default) Do not sort results. Fastest. Can be multi-
threaded.
path Sort by file path. Always single-threaded. The order is
determined by sorting files in each directory entry
during traversal. This means that given the files a/b
and a+, the latter will sort before the former even
though + would normally sort after / when doing a
reverse lexicographic sort.
modified Sort by the last modified time on a file. Always
single-threaded.
accessed Sort by the last accessed time on a file. Always
single-threaded.
created Sort by the creation time on a file. Always single-
threaded.
If the chosen (manually or by-default) sorting criteria isn't
available on your system (for example, creation time is not
available on ext4 file systems), then ripgrep will attempt to
detect this, print an error and exit without searching.
To sort results in ascending order, use the --sort flag. Also, this
flag overrides --sort.
Note that sorting results currently always forces ripgrep to
abandon parallelism and run in a single thread.
--trim
When set, all ASCII whitespace at the beginning of each line
printed will be removed.
This flag can be disabled with --no-trim.
--vimgrep
This flag instructs ripgrep to print results with every match on
its own line, including line numbers and column numbers.
With this option, a line with more than one match will be printed
in its entirety more than once. For that reason, the total amount
of output as a result of this flag can be quadratic in the size of
the input. For example, if the pattern matches every byte in an
input file, then each line will be repeated for every byte matched.
For this reason, users should only use this flag when there is no
other choice. Editor integrations should prefer some other way of
reading results from ripgrep, such as via the --json flag. One
alternative to avoiding exorbitant memory usage is to force ripgrep
into single threaded mode with the -j/--threads flag. Note though
that this will not impact the total size of the output, just the
heap memory that ripgrep will use.
-H, --with-filename
This flag instructs ripgrep to print the file path for each
matching line. This is the default when more than one file is
searched. If --heading is enabled (the default when printing to a
tty), the file path will be shown above clusters of matches from
each file; otherwise, the file name will be shown as a prefix for
each matched line.
This flag overrides -I/--no-filename.
-I, --no-filename
This flag instructs ripgrep to never print the file path with each
matching line. This is the default when ripgrep is explicitly
instructed to search one file or stdin.
This flag overrides -H/--with-filename.
--sort-files
DEPRECATED. Use --sort=path instead.
This flag instructs ripgrep to sort search results by file path
lexicographically in ascending order. Note that this currently
disables all parallelism and runs search in a single thread.
This flag overrides --sort and --sortr.
This flag can be disabled with --no-sort-files.
OUTPUT MODES
-c, --count
This flag suppresses normal output and shows the number of lines
that match the given patterns for each file searched. Each file
containing a match has its path and count printed on each line.
Note that unless -U/--multiline is enabled, this reports the number
of lines that match and not the total number of matches. In
multiline mode, -c/--count is equivalent to --count-matches.
If only one file is given to ripgrep, then only the count is
printed if there is a match. The -H/--with-filename flag can be
used to force printing the file path in this case. If you need a
count to be printed regardless of whether there is a match, then
use --include-zero.
This overrides the --count-matches flag. Note that when -c/--count
is combined with -o/--only-matching, then ripgrep behaves as if
--count-matches was given.
--count-matches
This flag suppresses normal output and shows the number of
individual matches of the given patterns for each file searched.
Each file containing matches has its path and match count printed
on each line. Note that this reports the total number of individual
matches and not the number of lines that match.
If only one file is given to ripgrep, then only the count is
printed if there is a match. The -H/--with-filename flag can be
used to force printing the file path in this case.
This overrides the -c/--count flag. Note that when -c/--count is
combined with -o/--only-matching, then ripgrep behaves as if
--count-matches was given.
-l, --files-with-matches
Print only the paths with at least one match and suppress match
contents.
This overrides --files-without-match.
--files-without-match
Print the paths that contain zero matches and suppress match
contents.
This overrides -l/--files-with-matches.
--json
Enable printing results in a JSON Lines format.
When this flag is provided, ripgrep will emit a sequence of
messages, each encoded as a JSON object, where there are five
different message types:
begin A message that indicates a file is being searched and
contains at least one match.
end A message the indicates a file is done being searched.
This message also include summary statistics about the
search for a particular file.
match A message that indicates a match was found. This
includes the text and offsets of the match.
context A message that indicates a contextual line was found.
This includes the text of the line, along with any
match information if the search was inverted.
summary The final message emitted by ripgrep that contains
summary statistics about the search across all files.
Since file paths or the contents of files are not guaranteed to be
valid UTF-8 and JSON itself must be representable by a Unicode
encoding, ripgrep will emit all data elements as objects with one
of two keys: text or bytes. text is a normal JSON string when the
data is valid UTF-8 while bytes is the base64 encoded contents of
the data.
The JSON Lines format is only supported for showing search results.
It cannot be used with other flags that emit other types of output,
such as --files, -l/--files-with-matches, --files-without-match,
-c/--count or --count-matches. ripgrep will report an error if any
of the aforementioned flags are used in concert with --json.
Other flags that control aspects of the standard output such as
-o/--only-matching, --heading, -r/--replace, -M/--max-columns,
etc., have no effect when --json is set. However, enabling JSON
output will always implicitly and unconditionally enable --stats.
A more complete description of the JSON format used can be found
here: https://docs.rs/grep-printer/*/grep_printer/struct.JSON.html.
This flag can be disabled with --no-json.
LOGGING OPTIONS
--debug
Show debug messages. Please use this when filing a bug report.
The --debug flag is generally useful for figuring out why ripgrep
skipped searching a particular file. The debug messages should
mention all files skipped and why they were skipped.
To get even more debug output, use the --trace flag, which implies
--debug along with additional trace data.
--no-ignore-messages
When this flag is enabled, all error messages related to parsing
ignore files are suppressed. By default, error messages are printed
to stderr. In cases where these errors are expected, this flag can
be used to avoid seeing the noise produced by the messages.
This flag can be disabled with --ignore-messages.
--no-messages
This flag suppresses some error messages. Specifically, messages
related to the failed opening and reading of files. Error messages
related to the syntax of the pattern are still shown.
This flag can be disabled with --messages.
--stats
When enabled, ripgrep will print aggregate statistics about the
search. When this flag is present, ripgrep will print at least the
following stats to stdout at the end of the search: number of
matched lines, number of files with matches, number of files
searched, and the time taken for the entire search to complete.
This set of aggregate statistics may expand over time.
This flag is always and implicitly enabled when --json is used.
Note that this flag has no effect if --files, -l/--files-with-
matches or --files-without-match is passed.
This flag can be disabled with --no-stats.
--trace
Show trace messages. This shows even more detail than the --debug
flag. Generally, one should only use this if --debug doesn't emit
the information you're looking for.
OTHER BEHAVIORS
--files
Print each file that would be searched without actually performing
the search. This is useful to determine whether a particular file
is being searched or not.
This overrides --type-list.
--generate=KIND
This flag instructs ripgrep to generate some special kind of output
identified by KIND and then quit without searching. KIND can be one
of the following values:
man Generates a manual page for ripgrep in the roff
format.
complete-bash Generates a completion script for the bash shell.
complete-zsh Generates a completion script for the zsh shell.
complete-fish Generates a completion script for the fish shell.
complete-powershell
Generates a completion script for PowerShell.
The output is written to stdout. The list above may expand over
time.
--no-config
When set, ripgrep will never read configuration files. When this
flag is present, ripgrep will not respect the RIPGREP_CONFIG_PATH
environment variable.
If ripgrep ever grows a feature to automatically read configuration
files in pre-defined locations, then this flag will also disable
that behavior as well.
--pcre2-version
When this flag is present, ripgrep will print the version of PCRE2
in use, along with other information, and then exit. If PCRE2 is
not available, then ripgrep will print an error message and exit
with an error code.
--type-list
Show all supported file types and their corresponding globs. This
takes any --type-add and --type-clear flags given into account.
Each type is printed on its own line, followed by a : and then a
comma-delimited list of globs for that type on the same line.
-V, --version
This flag prints ripgrep's version. This also may print other
relevant information, such as the presence of target specific
optimizations and the git revision that this build of ripgrep was
compiled from.
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 -q/--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 -q/--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
ripgrep does a fair bit of automatic filtering by default. This section
describes that filtering and how to control it.
TIP: To disable automatic filtering, use rg -uuu.
ripgrep's automatic "smart" filtering is one of the most apparent
differentiating features 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 relevant .gitignore files. This includes .gitignore
files in parent directories that are part of the same git
repository. (Unless --no-require-git is given.)
• 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. ripgrep will also respect .ignore files in
parent directories.
• Any rules in .rgignore. ripgrep will also respect .rgignore files in
parent directories.
• 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 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, like so:
--type-add
web:*.{html,css,js}*
The above would behave identically to the following command:
rg --type-add 'web:*.{html,css,js}*' foo
The same applies to using globs. This:
--glob=!.git
or this:
--glob
!.git
would behave identically to the following command:
rg --glob '!.git' foo
The bottom line is that every shell argument needs to be on its own
line. So for example, a config file containing
-j 4
is probably not doing what you intend. Instead, you want
-j
4
or
-j4
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, assuming your config file contains only --smart-case, then
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/--text flag enabled. (When the -a/--text 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 likely report its
resident memory usage as the size of the file. However, this does not
mean ripgrep actually needed to use that much heap memory; the
operating system will generally handle this for you.
VERSION
14.1.0
HOMEPAGE
https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep
Please report bugs and feature requests to 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.
If you have questions that don't obviously fall into the "bug" or
"feature request" category, then they are welcome in the Discussions
section of the issue tracker:
https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep/discussions.
AUTHORS
Andrew Gallant <jamslam@gmail.com>
14.1.0 2023-11-26 RG(1)