Ackr

Ackr is the very minimum subset of grep/ack/rak I can think of for lazy developers.

Description

Grep is a great tool. A very powerful tool. But most of the time, it is too powerful for my needs. I can never remember its syntax nor its options.

Ack is great and powerful too. But here again it has so many options.

As a developer I have really simple needs. As a lazy developer I want the most possible simple tool.

Here comes ackr:

• Ackr look for a search term into all text files, into all subfolders, from the working directory
• A search term is either a string (in this case Ackr is case insensitive) or a regexp
• Ackr has no options
• Ackr doesn't look into hidden folders/files
• Search term is displayed in bold font

It runs on unixes. I guess it won't run on windows.

And one more thing: ackr is not a replacement to grep/ack. If you need grep power, just use grep!

Install

gem install ackr

Usage

To look for a string (case insensitive):

$ ackr fixme
lib/ackr/search.rb
   8|   # FIXME Separate behaviours: search / print

README.markdown
  21| $ ackr fixme

Using a regexp (same search as above):

$ ackr /fixme/i

If you want to search only in a specific directory, you can temporarily cd into it like this:

(cd your/path && ackr yoursearch)

Tips

To look for a string containing spaces, quote the string:

$ ackr 'string with spaces'

To look for a regex containing spaces, quote the regex:

$ ackr '/regex with spaces/'

or escape the spaces:

$ ackr /regex\ with\ spaces/

When your search string contains some characters special to Bash you will have troubles. For example, instead of:

$ ackr &:active

you must use:

$ ackr '&:active'

Ignored files and directories

Ackr doesn't look into hidden files or directories. In addition, ackr ignores the following list of directories:

• blib
• CVS
• _darcs
• RCS
• SCCS
• pkg
• tmp
• temp
• log

If you really want to search into a such directory anyway, simply cd into it and make the search.

Caveats

Ackr is slow, very slow... May be I will consider performance in a future version.

Dependencies

• ruby >= 1.9.3

Contributing

1. Fork it
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature develop)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Add some feature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature)
5. Create new Pull Request

There is many other ways to contibute to ackr

1. Report any bug
2. Give me ideas
3. Correct my poor english syntax
4. Blog about ackr
5. Tell ackr to your friends and colleagues

License

MIT

Questions and/or Comments

Feel free to email Xavier Nayrac with any questions, or contact me on twitter.