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The Silver Searcher is a tool for searching code. It started off as a clone of Ack, but their feature sets have since diverged slightly. In typical usage, Ag is 5-10x faster than Ack.
Specs
Pros
Pro Ignores files in .gitignore by default
It ignores file patterns from your .gitignore, .hgignore and .ignore. This can be a bit buggy though.
Pro No need to manage another config file or learn a new config syntax
Everything is managed with command line args, meaning you can store commonly used options through .bashrc aliases, bash scripts, and/or autocompletion. There is no config file format to learn or extra dotfiles to manage.
Pro Supports PCRE RegExp
Supports RegEx like look-ahead/behind (only fixed length lookbehind however).
Cons
Con You have to remember commonly used options and add them as flags everytime
You are not able to define options in a config file as there is none. (You have to use a shell alias or wrapper script to get your default options.)
Con Cannot add custom file types
All file types ag is able to search for are baked into the executable. There is no way to add new ones neither via command line nor via (the not existing) config file. The only way is a pull request on github and waiting for a new release.
Con Suppress printing of long lines by default
By default lines longer than 2k characters aren't printed. This may be confusing for unaware users.
Con Directory search is limited to specific depth
Default value is 25 directories, to search down recursively. It may be confusing.
Con Only built-in types
Only supports file types (file extensions) which are baked into the program. It does this silently, producing unexpected results if the user isn't aware. Moreover, man page for Ag does not tell this explicitly in the description (you need to look into options). Adding one requires a pull request on GitHub.
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