burntsushi/ripgrep

★ 63,379RustAudience · developerComplexity · 1/5Setup · easy

Mindmap

mindmap
  root((repo))
    What it does
      Search file contents
      Respect gitignore
      Skip binaries
    Tech Stack
      Rust
      Regex engine
    Features
      File type filters
      Context lines
      Color output
    Use Cases
      Find function usages
      Search by file type
      Scan log files

mindmap root((repo)) What it does Search file contents Respect gitignore Skip binaries Tech Stack Rust Regex engine Features File type filters Context lines Color output Use Cases Find function usages Search by file type Scan log files

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Things people build with this

USE CASE 1

Find every usage of a function or variable name across an entire codebase in seconds.

USE CASE 2

Search only Python or TypeScript files for a specific import, pattern, or error message.

USE CASE 3

Locate config values or error strings buried in large log directories while skipping irrelevant files.

Tech stack

Rust

Getting it running

Difficulty · easy Time to first run · 5min

In plain English

ripgrep (also called rg) is a command-line tool for searching the contents of files on your computer for a text pattern. It is similar to the classic Unix grep tool but is much faster and more developer-friendly. The problem it solves is that searching a large codebase with traditional grep can be slow and requires extra flags to behave well in software projects, for example, you usually do not want to search inside the .git folder, generated build files, or binary files. ripgrep handles all of this automatically. By default, ripgrep respects your .gitignore file (the file that tells git which files to ignore), skips hidden files and directories, and skips binary files, meaning it only searches the source code you actually care about. It uses a high-performance regex engine built in Rust that is particularly fast at searching large files. The README includes benchmarks showing it is consistently faster than alternatives like The Silver Searcher, GNU grep, and ack across a range of search scenarios. You can search specific file types with flags like -tpy for Python files only, search multiple patterns at once, show surrounding context lines, and use colors to highlight matches. ripgrep works on Windows, macOS, and Linux. You would reach for it whenever you need to find where something appears in a project, looking for all usages of a function, finding which file defines a variable, or locating a specific error message. The tech stack is Rust, distributed as precompiled binaries or installable via package managers like brew, apt, or cargo.

Copy-paste prompts

Prompt 1

Give me the ripgrep command to find every file in my React project that imports from the `utils` folder, showing 2 lines of context around each match.

Prompt 2

I want to search only TypeScript files for the pattern `useState` and print just the file names without showing matched lines, what is the ripgrep command?

Prompt 3

How do I use ripgrep to search a directory but exclude the `node_modules`, `dist`, and `.git` folders from results?

Prompt 4

Write a ripgrep command that finds all TODO and FIXME comments in my codebase and outputs them as file:line:match format.

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