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What are the best command-line tools for searching plain-text data using regular expressions?
10
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Considered
63
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Nov 22, 2023
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10
Options
Considered
Best command-line tools for searching plain-text data using regular expressions
Price
License
Supported platforms
89
The Silver Searcher
-
-
-
89
grep
-
-
-
--
ripgrep
-
MIT/Unlicense
Windows, MacOS, Linux
--
ack
-
-
-
--
Total Commander
-
-
-
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89
The Silver Searcher
My Rec
ommendation
for
The Silver Searcher
My Recommendation for
The Silver Searcher
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All
5
Experiences
1
Pros
4
Top
Pro
•••
Speed
The Silver Searcher is lightning fast.
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donkardos's Experience
simple and fast
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Top
Pro
•••
Idiot proof
"ag searchterm" - it's that simple in its purest form.
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Top
Pro
•••
Support VCS ignore files
Ag can speed up by ignoring files matched by pattern in ".agignore" (deprecated), ".ignore" (since ag-v0.33.0), and VCS ignore files (.gitignore, .git/info/exclude, .hgignore, svn:ignore).
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Top
Pro
•••
Good overview of results
Grouped by file, highlighted with background color, linenumbers by default
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here
Recommend
20
89
grep
My Rec
ommendation
for
grep
My Recommendation for
grep
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All
13
Pros
10
Cons
3
Top
Pro
•••
Fast
Searches through large collections of files well before the expected time.
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Top
Con
•••
Incompatibilities between implementations
All implementations should follow POSIX standard however each implementation is allowed to add it's own extensions. Most popular GNU grep has bunch of extensions (like PCRE).
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Top
Pro
•••
Comes with all *nix system
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Top
Con
•••
Different performance between implementations
Sources: http://jlebar.com/2012/11/28/GNU_grep_is_10x_faster_than_Mac_grep.html https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-current/2010-August/019310.html
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Top
Pro
•••
Standardized regular expressions and command line options
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Top
Con
•••
Naive recursive search
By default grep -R searches all files that seems to be text. Do not filter searches in any way other than that.
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Top
Pro
•••
Reads from STDIN
You can search the output of any command just by piping into grep.
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Top
Pro
•••
Searches multiple files
It is possible to instruct grep to search through multiple files specified on the command line or entire directory trees.
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Top
Pro
•••
Wide array of controls for controlling output
You can opt to list only the filenames, only matches, context (configurable number of surrounding lines) of the match, colored output, and so forth
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Top
Pro
•••
Searches any text file
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Top
Pro
•••
Full PCRE regex support
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Top
Pro
•••
Preinstalled on every Unix like system
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Top
Pro
•••
Ubiquity
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Recommend
18
--
ripgrep
My Rec
ommendation
for
ripgrep
My Recommendation for
ripgrep
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All
10
Pros
5
Cons
4
Specs
Top
Pro
•••
Fast
ripgrep has performance similar to raw grep but provides similar level of usability as The Silver Searcher or ACK.
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Top
Con
•••
Does not support encodings other than UTF-8
If you need to search files with text encodings other than UTF-8 (like UTF-16), then ripgrep won’t work. ripgrep will still work on ASCII compatible encodings like latin1 or otherwise partially valid UTF-8. ripgrep may grow support for additional text encodings over time.
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Specs
License:
MIT/Unlicense
Supported platforms:
Windows, MacOS, Linux
Written in:
Rust
Threaded:
Yes
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Top
Pro
•••
Supports VCS ignore files
ripgrep can speed up by ignoring files matched by pattern in ".rgignore" (deprecated), ".ignore" (since rg-v0.2.0), and VCS ignore files (e.g., currently only ".gitignore").
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Top
Con
•••
Does not support decompression
If you need to search compressed files, ripgrep doesn’t try to do any decompression before searching.
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Top
Pro
•••
Speedy even with Unicode (UTF-8) searches
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Top
Con
•••
Does not support arbitrary lookahead/lookbehind assertions
However, it's supported since ripgrep v0.10.0 (2018-09-07) https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md#0100-2018-09-07
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Top
Pro
•••
Lock-free parallel recursive directory search
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Top
Con
•••
Does not support backreferences
However, it's supported since ripgrep v0.10.0 (2018-09-07) https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md#0100-2018-09-07
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Top
Pro
•••
ripgrep lets you only search certain types of files via file type whitelist
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4
1
--
ack
My Rec
ommendation
for
ack
My Recommendation for
ack
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3
Pros
2
Cons
1
Top
Pro
•••
Search term highlighting in results
ack will highlight parts of each row that match the search expression.
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Top
Con
•••
Confusing search flags
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Top
Pro
•••
Fewer false positive search results than grep
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Recommend
4
1
--
Total Commander
My Rec
ommendation
for
Total Commander
My Recommendation for
Total Commander
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3
Pros
1
Cons
1
Specs
Top
Pro
•••
Very customizable
Total Commander is extremely flexible, with plenty of customizable options such as changing the color scheme, customizing menus, and editing shortcuts.
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Top
Con
•••
Windows only
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Specs
Platforms:
Android
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Recommend
1
1
--
sed
My Rec
ommendation
for
sed
My Recommendation for
sed
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1
Pros
1
Top
Pro
•••
Searching and manipulating text
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Hide
Recommend
3
1
--
sift
My Rec
ommendation
for
sift
My Recommendation for
sift
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2
Pros
2
Top
Pro
•••
Cross-platform
Supports Linux, Windows, OSX, and several BSDs.
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Top
Pro
•••
Fast
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Recommend
1
--
awk
My Rec
ommendation
for
awk
My Recommendation for
awk
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All
1
Pros
1
Top
Pro
•••
Searching and manipulating text
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Hide
Recommend
4
2
--
perl
My Rec
ommendation
for
perl
My Recommendation for
perl
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All
2
Experiences
1
Pros
1
Top
Pro
•••
While being more generic tool is faster than grep even in its purpose
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PrivateMarqod's Experience
after finding limitations in awk I started using perl in 1993, it still a fast tool nearly always present in various unix, Practical Extraction and Reporting Language is very powerful at the command line
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1
--
rare
My Rec
ommendation
for
rare
My Recommendation for
rare
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All
5
Pros
5
Top
Pro
•••
Similar to grep/awk
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Top
Pro
•••
Fast regex parsing
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Top
Pro
•••
Realtime text analysis
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Top
Pro
•••
Full PCRE regex support
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Top
Pro
•••
Reads from STDIN
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1
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