NAME

SYNOPSIS

DESCRIPTION

OPTIONS

--ackmate

Output results in a format parseable by AckMate https://github.com/protocool/AckMate.

--[no]affinity

Set thread affinity (if platform supports it). Default is true.

-a --all-types

Search all files. This doesn´t include hidden files, and doesn´t respect any ignore files.

-A --after [LINES]

Print lines after match. If not provided, LINES defaults to 2.

-B --before [LINES]

Print lines before match. If not provided, LINES defaults to 2.

--[no]break

Print a newline between matches in different files. Enabled by default.

-c --count

Only print the number of matches in each file. Note: This is the number of matches, not the number of matching lines. Pipe output to wc -l if you want the number of matching lines.

--[no]color

Print color codes in results. Enabled by default.

--color-line-number

Color codes for line numbers. Default is 1;33.

--color-match

Color codes for result match numbers. Default is 30;43.

--color-path

Color codes for path names. Default is 1;32.

--column

Print column numbers in results.

-C --context [LINES]

Print lines before and after matches. Default is 2.

-D --debug

Output ridiculous amounts of debugging info. Not useful unless you´re actually debugging.

--depth NUM

Search up to NUM directories deep, -1 for unlimited. Default is 25.

--[no]filename

Print file names. Enabled by default, except when searching a single file.

-f --[no]follow

Follow symlinks. Default is false.

-F --fixed-strings

Alias for --literal for compatibility with grep.

--[no]group

The default, --group, lumps multiple matches in the same file together, and presents them under a single occurrence of the filename. --nogroup refrains from this, and instead places the filename at the start of each match line.

-g PATTERN

Print filenames matching PATTERN.

-G --file-search-regex PATTERN

Only search files whose names match PATTERN.

-H --[no]heading

Print filenames above matching contents.

--hidden

Search hidden files. This option obeys ignored files.

--ignore PATTERN

Ignore files/directories whose names match this pattern. Literal file and directory names are also allowed.

--ignore-dir NAME

Alias for --ignore for compatibility with ack.

-i --ignore-case

Match case-insensitively.

-l --files-with-matches

Only print the names of files containing matches, not the matching lines. An empty query will print all files that would be searched.

-L --files-without-matches

Only print the names of files that don´t contain matches.

--list-file-types

See FILE TYPES below.

-m --max-count NUM

Skip the rest of a file after NUM matches. Default is 0, which never skips.

--[no]mmap

Toggle use of memory-mapped I/O. Defaults to true on platforms where mmap() is faster than read(). (All but macOS.)

--[no]multiline

Match regexes across newlines. Enabled by default.

-n --norecurse

Don´t recurse into directories.

--[no]numbers

Print line numbers. Default is to omit line numbers when searching streams.

-o --only-matching

Print only the matching part of the lines.

--one-device

When recursing directories, don´t scan dirs that reside on other storage devices. This lets you avoid scanning slow network mounts. This feature is not supported on all platforms.

-p --path-to-ignore STRING

Provide a path to a specific .ignore file.

--pager COMMAND

Use a pager such as less. Use --nopager to override. This option is also ignored if output is piped to another program.

--parallel

Parse the input stream as a search term, not data to search. This is meant to be used with tools such as GNU parallel. For example: echo "foo\nbar\nbaz" | parallel "ag {} ." will run 3 instances of ag, searching the current directory for "foo", "bar", and "baz".

--print-long-lines

Print matches on very long lines (> 2k characters by default).

--passthrough --passthru

When searching a stream, print all lines even if they don´t match.

-Q --literal

Do not parse PATTERN as a regular expression. Try to match it literally.

-r --recurse

Recurse into directories when searching. Default is true.

-s --case-sensitive

Match case-sensitively.

-S --smart-case

Match case-sensitively if there are any uppercase letters in PATTERN, case-insensitively otherwise. Enabled by default.

--search-binary

Search binary files for matches.

--silent

Suppress all log messages, including errors.

--stats

Print stats (files scanned, time taken, etc).

--stats-only

Print stats (files scanned, time taken, etc) and nothing else.

-t --all-text

Search all text files. This doesn´t include hidden files.

-u --unrestricted

Search all files. This ignores .ignore, .gitignore, etc. It searches binary and hidden files as well.

-U --skip-vcs-ignores

Ignore VCS ignore files (.gitignore, .hgignore), but still use .ignore.

-v --invert-match

Match every line not containing the specified pattern.

-V --version

Print version info.

--vimgrep

Output results in the same form as Vim´s :vimgrep /pattern/g

Here is a ~/.vimrc configuration example:

set grepprg=ag\ --vimgrep\ $* set grepformat=%f:%l:%c:%m

Then use :grep to grep for something. Then use :copen, :cn, :cp, etc. to navigate through the matches.

-w --word-regexp

Only match whole words.

--workers NUM

Use NUM worker threads. Default is the number of CPU cores, with a max of 8.

-z --search-zip

Search contents of compressed files. Currently, gz and xz are supported. This option requires that ag is built with lzma and zlib.

-0 --null --print0

Separate the filenames with \0, rather than \n: this allows xargs -0 <command> to correctly process filenames containing spaces or newlines.

FILE TYPES

IGNORING FILES

If you want to ignore .gitignore and .hgignore, but still take .ignore into account, use -U.

Use the -t option to search all text files; -a to search all files; and -u to search all, including hidden files.

EXAMPLES

ag foo /bar/: Find matches for "foo" in path /bar/.

ag -- --foo: Find matches for "--foo" in the current directory. (As with most UNIX command line utilities, "--" is used to signify that the remaining arguments should not be treated as options.)

ABOUT

SEE ALSO