ripgrep is a line-oriented search tool that recursively searches the current directory for a regex pattern. By default, ripgrep will respect gitignore rules and automatically skip hidden files/directories and binary files. (To disable all automatic filtering by default, use rg -uuu
.) ripgrep has first class support on Windows, macOS and Linux, with binary downloads available for every release. ripgrep is similar to other popular search tools like The Silver Searcher, ack and grep.
Dual-licensed under MIT or the UNLICENSE.
Please see the CHANGELOG for a release history.
Documentation quick linksThis example searches the entire Linux kernel source tree (after running make defconfig && make -j8
) for [A-Z]+_SUSPEND
, where all matches must be words. Timings were collected on a system with an Intel i9-12900K 5.2 GHz.
Please remember that a single benchmark is never enough! See my blog post on ripgrep for a very detailed comparison with more benchmarks and analysis.
Tool Command Line count Time ripgrep (Unicode)rg -n -w '[A-Z]+_SUSPEND'
536 0.082s (1.00x) hypergrep hgrep -n -w '[A-Z]+_SUSPEND'
536 0.167s (2.04x) git grep git grep -P -n -w '[A-Z]+_SUSPEND'
536 0.273s (3.34x) The Silver Searcher ag -w '[A-Z]+_SUSPEND'
534 0.443s (5.43x) ugrep ugrep -r --ignore-files --no-hidden -I -w '[A-Z]+_SUSPEND'
536 0.639s (7.82x) git grep LC_ALL=C git grep -E -n -w '[A-Z]+_SUSPEND'
536 0.727s (8.91x) git grep (Unicode) LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8 git grep -E -n -w '[A-Z]+_SUSPEND'
536 2.670s (32.70x) ack ack -w '[A-Z]+_SUSPEND'
2677 2.935s (35.94x)
Here's another benchmark on the same corpus as above that disregards gitignore files and searches with a whitelist instead. The corpus is the same as in the previous benchmark, and the flags passed to each command ensure that they are doing equivalent work:
Tool Command Line count Time ripgreprg -uuu -tc -n -w '[A-Z]+_SUSPEND'
447 0.063s (1.00x) ugrep ugrep -r -n --include='*.c' --include='*.h' -w '[A-Z]+_SUSPEND'
447 0.607s (9.62x) GNU grep grep -E -r -n --include='*.c' --include='*.h' -w '[A-Z]+_SUSPEND'
447 0.674s (10.69x)
Now we'll move to searching on single large file. Here is a straight-up comparison between ripgrep, ugrep and GNU grep on a file cached in memory (~13GB, OpenSubtitles.raw.en.gz
, decompressed):
rg -w 'Sherlock [A-Z]\w+'
7882 1.042s (1.00x) ugrep ugrep -w 'Sherlock [A-Z]\w+'
7882 1.339s (1.28x) GNU grep (Unicode) LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8 egrep -w 'Sherlock [A-Z]\w+'
7882 6.577s (6.31x)
In the above benchmark, passing the -n
flag (for showing line numbers) increases the times to 1.664s
for ripgrep and 9.484s
for GNU grep. ugrep times are unaffected by the presence or absence of -n
.
Beware of performance cliffs though:
Tool Command Line count Time ripgrep (Unicode)rg -w '[A-Z]\w+ Sherlock [A-Z]\w+'
485 1.053s (1.00x) GNU grep (Unicode) LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8 grep -E -w '[A-Z]\w+ Sherlock [A-Z]\w+'
485 6.234s (5.92x) ugrep ugrep -w '[A-Z]\w+ Sherlock [A-Z]\w+'
485 28.973s (27.51x)
And performance can drop precipitously across the board when searching big files for patterns without any opportunities for literal optimizations:
Tool Command Line count Time ripgreprg '[A-Za-z]{30}'
6749 15.569s (1.00x) ugrep ugrep -E '[A-Za-z]{30}'
6749 21.857s (1.40x) GNU grep LC_ALL=C grep -E '[A-Za-z]{30}'
6749 32.409s (2.08x) GNU grep (Unicode) LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8 grep -E '[A-Za-z]{30}'
6795 8m30s (32.74x)
Finally, high match counts also tend to both tank performance and smooth out the differences between tools (because performance is dominated by how quickly one can handle a match and not the algorithm used to detect the match, generally speaking):
Tool Command Line count Time ripgreprg the
83499915 6.948s (1.00x) ugrep ugrep the
83499915 11.721s (1.69x) GNU grep LC_ALL=C grep the
83499915 15.217s (2.19x) Why should I use ripgrep?
.gitignore
/.ignore
/.rgignore
files, it won't search hidden files and it won't search binary files. Automatic filtering can be disabled with rg -uuu
.rg -tpy foo
limits your search to Python files and rg -Tjs foo
excludes JavaScript files from your search. ripgrep can be taught about new file types with custom matching rules.grep
, such as showing the context of search results, searching multiple patterns, highlighting matches with color and full Unicode support. Unlike GNU grep, ripgrep stays fast while supporting Unicode (which is always on).-P/--pcre2
(use PCRE2 always) or --auto-hybrid-regex
(use PCRE2 only if needed). An alternative syntax is provided via the --engine (default|pcre2|auto)
option.-E/--encoding
flag.)-z/--search-zip
flag.In other words, use ripgrep if you like speed, filtering by default, fewer bugs and Unicode support.
Why shouldn't I use ripgrep?Despite initially not wanting to add every feature under the sun to ripgrep, over time, ripgrep has grown support for most features found in other file searching tools. This includes searching for results spanning across multiple lines, and opt-in support for PCRE2, which provides look-around and backreference support.
At this point, the primary reasons not to use ripgrep probably consist of one or more of the following:
Generally, yes. A large number of benchmarks with detailed analysis for each is available on my blog.
Summarizing, ripgrep is fast because:
-P/--pcre2
flag.).gitignore
files using a RegexSet
. That means a single file path can be matched against multiple glob patterns simultaneously.crossbeam
and ignore
.Andy Lester, author of ack, has published an excellent table comparing the features of ack, ag, git-grep, GNU grep and ripgrep: https://beyondgrep.com/feature-comparison/
Note that ripgrep has grown a few significant new features recently that are not yet present in Andy's table. This includes, but is not limited to, configuration files, passthru, support for searching compressed files, multiline search and opt-in fancy regex support via PCRE2.
If you'd like to try ripgrep before installing, there's an unofficial playground and an interactive tutorial.
If you have any questions about these, please open an issue in the tutorial repo.
The binary name for ripgrep is rg
.
Archives of precompiled binaries for ripgrep are available for Windows, macOS and Linux. Linux and Windows binaries are static executables. Users of platforms not explicitly mentioned below are advised to download one of these archives.
If you're a macOS Homebrew or a Linuxbrew user, then you can install ripgrep from homebrew-core:
If you're a MacPorts user, then you can install ripgrep from the official ports:
$ sudo port install ripgrep
If you're a Windows Chocolatey user, then you can install ripgrep from the official repo:
If you're a Windows Scoop user, then you can install ripgrep from the official bucket:
If you're a Windows Winget user, then you can install ripgrep from the winget-pkgs repository:
$ winget install BurntSushi.ripgrep.MSVC
If you're an Arch Linux user, then you can install ripgrep from the official repos:
If you're a Gentoo user, you can install ripgrep from the official repo:
$ sudo emerge sys-apps/ripgrep
If you're a Fedora user, you can install ripgrep from official repositories.
$ sudo dnf install ripgrep
If you're an openSUSE user, ripgrep is included in openSUSE Tumbleweed and openSUSE Leap since 15.1.
$ sudo zypper install ripgrep
If you're a RHEL/CentOS 7/8 user, you can install ripgrep from copr:
$ sudo yum install -y yum-utils
$ sudo yum-config-manager --add-repo=https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/carlwgeorge/ripgrep/repo/epel-7/carlwgeorge-ripgrep-epel-7.repo
$ sudo yum install ripgrep
If you're a Nix user, you can install ripgrep from nixpkgs:
$ nix-env --install ripgrep
If you're a Flox user, you can install ripgrep as follows:
If you're a Guix user, you can install ripgrep from the official package collection:
If you're a Debian user (or a user of a Debian derivative like Ubuntu), then ripgrep can be installed using a binary .deb
file provided in each ripgrep release.
$ curl -LO https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep/releases/download/14.1.0/ripgrep_14.1.1-1_amd64.deb
$ sudo dpkg -i ripgrep_14.1.1-1_amd64.deb
If you run Debian stable, ripgrep is officially maintained by Debian, although its version may be older than the deb
package available in the previous step.
$ sudo apt-get install ripgrep
If you're an Ubuntu Cosmic (18.10) (or newer) user, ripgrep is available using the same packaging as Debian:
$ sudo apt-get install ripgrep
(N.B. Various snaps for ripgrep on Ubuntu are also available, but none of them seem to work right and generate a number of very strange bug reports that I don't know how to fix and don't have the time to fix. Therefore, it is no longer a recommended installation option.)
If you're an ALT user, you can install ripgrep from the official repo:
$ sudo apt-get install ripgrep
If you're a FreeBSD user, then you can install ripgrep from the official ports:
$ sudo pkg install ripgrep
If you're an OpenBSD user, then you can install ripgrep from the official ports:
If you're a NetBSD user, then you can install ripgrep from pkgsrc:
$ sudo pkgin install ripgrep
If you're a Haiku x86_64 user, then you can install ripgrep from the official ports:
$ sudo pkgman install ripgrep
If you're a Haiku x86_gcc2 user, then you can install ripgrep from the same port as Haiku x86_64 using the x86 secondary architecture build:
$ sudo pkgman install ripgrep_x86
If you're a Void Linux user, then you can install ripgrep from the official repository:
$ sudo xbps-install -Syv ripgrep
If you're a Rust programmer, ripgrep can be installed with cargo
.
strip
on the binary.Alternatively, one can use cargo binstall
to install a ripgrep binary directly from GitHub:
ripgrep is written in Rust, so you'll need to grab a Rust installation in order to compile it. ripgrep compiles with Rust 1.88.0 (stable) or newer. In general, ripgrep tracks the latest stable release of the Rust compiler.
To build ripgrep:
$ git clone https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep
$ cd ripgrep
$ cargo build --release
$ ./target/release/rg --version
0.1.3
NOTE: In the past, ripgrep supported a simd-accel
Cargo feature when using a Rust nightly compiler. This only benefited UTF-16 transcoding. Since it required unstable features, this build mode was prone to breakage. Because of that, support for it has been removed. If you want SIMD optimizations for UTF-16 transcoding, then you'll have to petition the encoding_rs
project to use stable APIs.
Finally, optional PCRE2 support can be built with ripgrep by enabling the pcre2
feature:
$ cargo build --release --features 'pcre2'
Enabling the PCRE2 feature works with a stable Rust compiler and will attempt to automatically find and link with your system's PCRE2 library via pkg-config
. If one doesn't exist, then ripgrep will build PCRE2 from source using your system's C compiler and then statically link it into the final executable. Static linking can be forced even when there is an available PCRE2 system library by either building ripgrep with the MUSL target or by setting PCRE2_SYS_STATIC=1
.
ripgrep can be built with the MUSL target on Linux by first installing the MUSL library on your system (consult your friendly neighborhood package manager). Then you just need to add MUSL support to your Rust toolchain and rebuild ripgrep, which yields a fully static executable:
$ rustup target add x86_64-unknown-linux-musl
$ cargo build --release --target x86_64-unknown-linux-musl
Applying the --features
flag from above works as expected. If you want to build a static executable with MUSL and with PCRE2, then you will need to have musl-gcc
installed, which might be in a separate package from the actual MUSL library, depending on your Linux distribution.
ripgrep is relatively well-tested, including both unit tests and integration tests. To run the full test suite, use:
from the repository root.
rg --json
output format. So all you need to do to make it work is rg --json pattern | delta
. See delta's manual section on grep for more details.For reporting a security vulnerability, please contact Andrew Gallant. The contact page has my email address and PGP public key if you wish to send an encrypted message.
The following is a list of known translations of ripgrep's documentation. These are unofficially maintained and may not be up to date.
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