OptionsOn ag itself
--ackmate
Output results in a format parseable by AckMate https://github.com/protocool/AckMate
--affinity
Set thread affinity (if platform supports it)
--noaffinity
Don't set thread affinity (if platform supports it)
-a--all-types
Search all files. This doesn't include hidden files, and doesn't respect any ignore files
-A--after
Print lines after match <LINES>
-B--before
Print lines before match <LINES>
--nobreak
Print a newline between matches in different files. Enabled by default
-c--count
Only print the number of matches in each file. Note: This is the number of matches, not the number of matching lines. Pipe output to wc -l if you want the number of matching lines
--color
Print color codes in results
--nocolor
Don't print color codes in results
--color-line-number
Color codes for line numbers. Default is 1;33
--color-match
Color codes for result match numbers. Default is 30;43
--color-path
Color codes for path names. Default is 1;32
--column
Print column numbers in results
-C--context
Print lines before and after matches <LINES>
-D--debug
Output ridiculous amounts of debugging info. Not useful unless you're actually debugging
--depth
Search up to NUM directories deep, -1 for unlimited <NUM>
--filename
Print file names
--nofilename
Don't print file names
-f--follow
Follow symlinks
--nofollow
Don't follow symlinks
-F--fixed-strings
Alias for --literal for compatibility with grep
--group
Lumps multiple matches in the same file together, and presents them under a single occurrence of the filename
--nogroup
Refrains from lumping matches in the same file together, and instead places the filename at the start of each match line
-g
Print filenames matching PATTERN <PATTERN>
-G--file-search-regex
Only search files whose names match PATTERN <PATTERN>
-H--heading
Print filenames above matching contents
--noheading
Don't print filenames above matching contents
--hidden
Search hidden files. This option obeys ignored files
--ignore
Ignore files/directories whose names match this pattern. Literal file and directory names are also allowed <PATTERN>
--ignore-dir
Alias for --ignore for compatibility with ack <NAME>
-i--ignore-case
Match case-insensitively
-l--files-with-matches
Only print the names of files containing matches, not the matching lines. An empty query will print all files that would be searched
-L--files-without-matches
Only print the names of files that don't contain matches
--list-file-types
See FILE TYPES below
-m--max-count
Skip the rest of a file after NUM matches. Default is 0, which never skips <NUM>
--mmap
Use of memory-mapped I/O. Defaults to true on platforms where mmap() is faster than read(). (All but macOS.)
--nommap
Don't use of memory-mapped I/O. Defaults to true on platforms where mmap() is faster than read(). (All but macOS.)
--multiline
Match regexes across newlines
--nomultiline
Don't match regexes across newlines
-n--norecurse
Don't recurse into directories
--numbers
Print line numbers
--nonumbers
Don't print line numbers
-o--only-matching
Print only the matching part of the lines
--one-device
When recursing directories, don't scan dirs that reside on other storage devices. This lets you avoid scanning slow network mounts. This feature is not supported on all platforms
-p--path-to-ignore
Provide a path to a specific .ignore file <STRING>
--pager
Use a pager such as less. Use --nopager to override. This option is also ignored if output is piped to another program <COMMAND>
--parallel
Parse the input stream as a search term, not data to search. This is meant to be used with tools such as GNU parallel. For example: echo "foo
bar
baz" | parallel "ag {} ." will run 3 instances of ag, searching the current directory for "foo", "bar", and "baz"
--print-long-lines
Print matches on very long lines (> 2k characters by default)
--passthrough--passthru
When searching a stream, print all lines even if they don't match
-Q--literal
Do not parse PATTERN as a regular expression. Try to match it literally
-r--recurse
Recurse into directories when searching. Default is true
-s--case-sensitive
Match case-sensitively
-S--smart-case
Match case-sensitively if there are any uppercase letters in PATTERN, case-insensitively otherwise. Enabled by default
--search-binary
Search binary files for matches
--silent
Suppress all log messages, including errors
--stats
Print stats (files scanned, time taken, etc)
--stats-only
Print stats (files scanned, time taken, etc) and nothing else
-t--all-text
Search all text files. This doesn't include hidden files
-u--unrestricted
Search all files. This ignores .ignore, .gitignore, etc. It searches binary and hidden files as well
-U--skip-vcs-ignores
Ignore VCS ignore files (.gitignore, .hgignore), but still use .ignore
-v--invert-match
Match every line not containing the specified pattern
-V--version
Print version info
--vimgrep
Output results in the same form as Vim's :vimgrep /pattern/g Here is a ~/.vimrc configuration example: set grepprg=ag --vimgrep $* set grepformat=%f:%l:%c:%m Then use :grep to grep for something. Then use :copen, :cn, :cp, etc. to navigate through the matches
-w--word-regexp
Only match whole words
--workers
Use NUM worker threads. Default is the number of CPU cores, with a max of 8 <NUM>
-z--search-zip
Search contents of compressed files. Currently, gz and xz are supported. This option requires that ag is built with lzma and zlib
-0--null--print0
Separate the filenames with , rather than
: this allows xargs -0 <command> to correctly process filenames containing spaces or newlines
