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:


+o . will only match valid UTF-8 encoded Unicode scalar values.


+o Classes like \w, \s, \d are all Unicode aware and much bigger
than their ASCII only versions.


+o Case insensitive matching will use Unicode case folding.


+o 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.)


+o 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:


+o First, the pattern contains at least one literal character.
For example, a\w contains a literal (a) but just \w does not.


+o 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 argument 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:


+o When the TERM environment variable is not set or set to dumb.


+o When the NO_COLOR environment variable is set (regardless of
value).


+o 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. One 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:


+o 0 exit status occurs only when at least one match was found, and
if no error occurred, unless -q/--quiet was given.

+o 1 exit status occurs only when no match was found and no error
occurred.

+o 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:

+o Any global rules, e.g., in $HOME/.config/git/ignore.

+o 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.)

+o 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:

+o Any rules in .ignore. ripgrep will also respect .ignore files in
parent directories.

+o Any rules in .rgignore. ripgrep will also respect .rgignore files
in parent directories.

+o Any rules in files specified with the --ignore-file flag.

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

+o Files given by --ignore-file.

+o Global gitignore rules, e.g., from $HOME/.config/git/ignore.

+o Local rules from .git/info/exclude.

+o Rules from .gitignore.

+o Rules from .ignore.

+o 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:

+o 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.

+o -./--hidden will force ripgrep to search hidden files and
directories.

+o --binary will force ripgrep to search binary files.

+o -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:

+o -u is equivalent to --no-ignore.

+o -uu is equivalent to --no-ignore --hidden.

+o -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

14.1.1

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>

14.1.1 2024-09-08 RG(1)