Ripgrep Cheatsheet

This is my cheatsheet reference for Ripgrep ( rg ). I’ve pulled out the most interesting and useful parts I use. For a comprehensive guide, refer to the manual ( man rg ), the help ( rg -h ), and the user guide.

Cheatsheet

Some of rg’s default behaviours to be aware of:

1. Strings are treated as regular expressions
2. Respects your .gitignore file(s)
3. Ignores hidden files, hidden directories, and binary files
4. Searches recursively (subdirectories)
5. Case sensitive

Search Options	Flags
Invert match (exclude string)	-v or --invert-match
Ignore case	-i or --ignore-case
Search case insensitively if all lowercase	-S or --smart-case
Treat all patterns as literals (non-regex)	-F or --fixed-strings
Ignore .gitignore, .ignore, etc.	--no-ignore
Search hidden files/directories	-. or --hidden
Limit number of matching lines	-m <NUM> or --max-count <NUM>

Filter Options	Flags
Include specific paths (glob)	-g "src/*" will search in the src directory
Exclude specific paths (glob)	-g !"*tests" will exclude files if tests in path
Include/exclude paths case insensitively	--iglob
Process all glob patterns case insensitively	--glob-case-insensitive
Only search specific file types	-tlua, -tjson, -tc, -tcpp, -tjs, -tts, and more
Only search custom-specified file types (glob)	-g *"*.{c, js}"
Don’t search specific file types	-Tlua, -Tjson, -Tc, -Tcpp, -Tjs, -Tts, and more

Output Options/Modes	Flags
Show NUM lines after each match	-A <NUM>
Show NUM lines before each match	-B <NUM>
Show NUM lines before and after each match	-C <NUM>
Show column numbers	--column
Hide line numbers	-N
Count (number of occurrences)	-c
Print files that would be searched, without performing search	--files
Don’t group matches by each file	--no-heading
Trim prefix whitespace from matches	--trim
Only show filenames that don’t contain matches	--files-without-match

Other Stuff	Flags
Search through compressed files (e.g. .bz2)	-z
Show all supported file types and their corresponding globs	--type-list

Example default output of rg:

nzkj@nzkj projects % rg "unordered"
algorithms/arrays-and-hashing/group-anagrams.cpp
19:  std::unordered_map<std::string, std::vector<int>> string_indexes;

algorithms/arrays-and-hashing/contains-duplicate.cpp
1:#include <unordered_set>
20:  std::unordered_set<int> unique_values;

algorithms/arrays-and-hashing/two-sum.cpp
1:#include <unordered_map>
17:  std::unordered_map<int, int> num_index;

Where else can I use Ripgrep?

I primarily use Ripgrep through Neovim via the Telescope plugin and the Telescope Live Grep Args add-on. This allows me to write a rg prompt and have the results live update with each keystroke, along with a file preview of the result. I appreciate the consistent experience between my terminal and editor that the add-on provides. I also value the ability to perform highly specific searches to help me narrow down on what I’m looking for.

Other side notes

I frequently search through .bz2 compressed log files. I used to use bzgrep until I realised rg has the -z flag, which allows searching through many different kinds of compressed files. If your compressed files are on a server without rg (and you can’t install it), consider using sshfs to mount the remote directory to your local machine, and then use rg -z to search through the files. You can use sshfs to mount a directory using the following command:

mkdir /path/to/mountpoint
sshfs user@remotehost:/path/to/directory /path/to/mountpoint

• For directories relative to home use user@remotehost:~/path/to/directory, e.g. nzkj@myserver:~/projects/my_project
• For directories relative to root use user@remotehost://path/to/directory, e.g. nzkj@myserver://tmp/ (note the double slash for /tmp/)

You can unmount using the following command:

sudo umount /path/to/mountpoint

I found that rg was significantly faster than bzgrep. In fact, searching through a year’s worth of logs, rg took 5.5s and bzgrep 1m5s!