Ripgrep is faster than grep, ag, git grep, ucg, pt, sift (2016) (opens in new tab)

The comparison between jiff, chrono, time and hifitime is just as good of a read in my opinion: https://github.com/BurntSushi/jiff/blob/HEAD/COMPARE.md

(And they have also written interesting things on regex, non-regex string matching, etc.)

On a mid-size codebase, I fzf- and rg-ed through the code almost instantly, while watching my coworker's computer slow down to a crawl when Pycharm started reindexing the project.

If it actually matched grep's contract with opt-in differences that'd be a gamechanger and actually let it become the default for people, but that ship seems to have sailed.

  rg      : Searches git tracked files
  rg -u   : Includes .gitignored files
  rg -uu  : Includes .gitignored + hidden files
  rg -uuu : Includes .gitignored + hidden + binary files

Sometimes I forget that some of the config files I have for CI in a project are under a dot directory, and therefore ignored by rg by default, so I have to repeat the search giving the path to that config files subdirectory if I want to see the results that are under that one (or use some extra flags for rg to not ignore dot directories other than .git)

I think riggrep will not search UTF-16 files by default. I had some such issue once at least.

I ran into that with pt, and it definitely made me think I was going mad[0]. I can't fully remember if rg suffered from the same issue or not.

[0] https://github.com/monochromegane/the_platinum_searcher/issu...

I suspect, in general, age has a fair amount to do with it (I certainly notice it in myself) but either way I think it's worth evaluating new things every so often.

Something like rg in specific can be really tricky to evaluate because it does basically the same thing as the builtin grep, but sometimes just being faster crosses a threshold where you can use it in ways you couldn't previously.

E.g. some kind of find as you type system, if it took 1s per letter it would be genuinely unusuable but 50ms might take it over the edge so now it's an option. Stuff like that.

The ".ignore" name was actually suggested by the author of ag (whereas the author of rg thought it was too generic): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12568245

It's nice and everything, but I remember being happy with the tools before (I think i moved from grep to ack, then jumped due to perf to ag and for unremembered reasons to pt.)

It took me a while, but I remembered I ran into an issue with pt incorrectly guessing the encoding of some files[0].

I can't remember whether rg suffered from the same issue or not, but I do know after switching to rg everything was plain sailing and I've been happy with it since.

[0] https://github.com/monochromegane/the_platinum_searcher/issu...

TIL: rg uses Rusts RegEx library (incompatible to PCRE, incompatible to RE2)

https://github.com/chmln/sd

Someone kinda did

// really hoping openai wouldn't now force him to work on some crappy codex stuff if he stays there / in astral.

Also something-something about dependencies (a Rust staple): https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/1fvzfnb/gg_a_fast_mor...

I wonder how much the above reflects a dated and/or stereotyped view? Who here works with "sysadmins"? I mean... devops-all-the-places now, right? :P Share your experiences?: I'm curious.

If I were a sysadmin, I'd have some kind of "sanity check" script if I had to manage a fleet of disparate systems. I'd use it automatically when I logon to a system. Checking things like: Linux vs BSD, what tools are installed, load, any weirdnesses, etc. Heck, maybe even create aliases that abstract over all of it, as much as possible. Maybe copy over a helix binary for editing too, if that was kosher.