Provided by: ripgrep_14.1.0-1_amd64 
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>