ag

Search for a pattern recursively

$ ag [pattern]

$ ag --python [pattern]

$ ag -i [pattern]

$ ag -l [pattern]

$ ag -Q "[literal string]"

$ ag -C [3] [pattern]

ag [options] pattern [path...]

ag (The Silver Searcher) is a code-searching tool similar to ack but faster. It searches through source code recursively, automatically ignoring files listed in .gitignore and .hgignore, and skipping hidden files and binary files.
The tool is optimized for speed, using multiple threads and memory-mapped I/O. It supports Perl-compatible regular expressions and provides colored output with context lines.

-i, --ignore-case

Case insensitive search

Case sensitive search (default)

Invert the match

Match whole words only

Print only file names with matches

Print file names without matches

Print count of matches per file

Print n lines of context

Print n lines after match

Print n lines before match

Treat pattern as literal string

Search only specific file types

Search file names matching pattern

Search hidden files

Search all files (ignore .gitignore)

Search inside compressed files

Not as fast as ripgrep on very large codebases. Some regex features may differ from grep. File type detection is based on extensions, not content.

ag was created by Geoff Greer and first released in 2011. It was designed as a faster alternative to ack, achieving significant speed improvements through parallelization and smarter file filtering. It inspired later tools like ripgrep.

rg(1), ack(1), grep(1), git-grep(1)