Ripgrep is faster than grep, ag, git grep, ucg, pt, sift (2016)
59 points by jxmorris12 5 hours ago | 26 comments
  • pipe01 2 hours ago |
    (2016)
  • keybored an hour ago |
    > The binary name for `ripgrep` is `rg`.

    I don’t understand when people typeset some name in verbatim, lowercase, but then have another name for the actual command. That’s confusing to me.

    Programmers are too enarmored with lower-case names. Why not Ripgrep? Then I can surmise that there might not be some program ripgrep(1) (there might be a shorter version), since using capital letters is not traditional for CLI programs.

    Look at Stacked Git:

    https://stacked-git.github.io/

    > Stacked Git, StGit for short, is an application for managing Git commits as a stack of patches.

    > ... The `stg` command line tool ...

    Now, I’ve been puzzled in the past when inputing `stgit` doesn’t work. But here they call it StGit for short and the actual command is typeset in verbatim (stg(1) would have also worked).

    • lpapez an hour ago |
      You can simply add a shell alias with whatever name you like and move on.
      • qsera an hour ago |
        True, but easier said than done, because one often need to work in more shells than their local machines..
        • pie_flavor 40 minutes ago |
          This is a nonstandard tool. If you can't customize your machine, you already don't have it.
      • BiteCode_dev 24 minutes ago |
        You can't in most corporate env machines.

        You may be able to download ripgrep, and execute it (!), but god forbid you can create an alias in your shell in a persistant manner.

    • orf an hour ago |
      It’s only 2 characters - if you use it all the time it becomes muscle memory.
    • Macha 15 minutes ago |
      How would you capitalise it? RipGrep? RIPGrep? You’d need to pick a side and lose the pun. (And of course grep itself would need to be GReP if we took it all the way)
  • dist-epoch an hour ago |
    (2024) gg: A fast, more lightweight ripgrep alternative for daily use cases

    https://reddit.com/r/rust/comments/1fvzfnb/gg_a_fast_more_li...

    • keybored an hour ago |
      > > IMO, as long as the time differences remain small, I'm totally okay with ripgrep being slower by default on smaller corpora if it means being a lot faster by default on bigger corpora.

      Also something-something about dependencies (a Rust staple): https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/1fvzfnb/gg_a_fast_mor...

      • masklinn 19 minutes ago |
        Note that this is the author of ripgrep replying to a third party commenter asking whether rg isn’t already lightweight, and comparing the two under various possible definitions of “lightweight”.
  • wewewedxfgdf an hour ago |
    I was using ripgrep once and it had a bug that led me downa terrifying rabbit hole - I can't recall what it was but it involved not being able to find text that absolutely should have been there.

    Eventually I was considering rebuilding the machine completely but for some reason after a very long time digging deep into the rabbit hole I tried plain old grep and there was the data exactly where it should have been.

    So it's such a vague story but it was a while back - I don't remember the specifics but I sure recall the panic.

    • QuantumNomad_ an hour ago |
      Was it confirmed to be a bug?

      Sometimes I forget that some of the config files I have for CI in a project are under a dot directory, and therefore ignored by rg by default, so I have to repeat the search giving the path to that config files subdirectory if I want to see the results that are under that one (or use some extra flags for rg to not ignore dot directories other than .git)

      • wewewedxfgdf an hour ago |
        Sorry I don't recall exactly but I don't think it was anything special like a hidden or binary file.

        I still use it but Ive never trusted it fully since then I double check.

    • RichardLake an hour ago |
      Was the file in a .gitignore by any chance? I've got my home folder in git to keep track of dot/config files and that always catches me out. Really dislike it defaulting to that ignoring files that are ignored by git.
    • kelipso 41 minutes ago |
      I had that happen too recently… Basically rg x would show nothing but grep -r x showed the lines for any x. Tried multiple times with different x, then I kept using grep -r at that time. After a few days, I started using rg again and it worked fine but now I tend to use grep -r occasionally too to make sure.
      • masklinn 25 minutes ago |
        Next time that happens try looking at the paths, adding a pair of -u, or running with --debug: by default rg will ignore files which are hidden (dotfiles) or excluded by ignore files (.gitignore, .ignore, …).

        See https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep/blob/master/GUIDE.md#a... for the details.

    • nikbackm 36 minutes ago |
      Maybe related to text encodings?

      I think riggrep will not search UTF-16 files by default. I had some such issue once at least.

  • boyter an hour ago |
    Such a good read. I actually went back though it the other day to steal the searching for the least common byte idea out to speed up my search tool https://github.com/boyter/cs which when coupled with the simd upper lower search technique from fzf cut the wall clock runtime by a third.

    There was this post from cursor https://cursor.com/blog/fast-regex-search today about building an index for agents due to them hitting a limit on ripgrep, but I’m not sure what codebase they are hitting that warrants it. Especially since they would have to be at 100-200 GB to be getting to 15s of runtime. Unless it’s all matches that is.

  • ianberdin an hour ago |
    It’s a pure delight to read this docs / pitch.
  • unxmaal an hour ago |
    I just got ripgrep ported to IRIX over the weekend.

    It’s fast even on a 300mhz Octane.

    • bartread 22 minutes ago |
      Is IRIX experiencing a hobbyist revival or something? This is the second IRIX reference I’ve seen on here in the past two days, and there was a submission a day or two ago (c.f. a Voodoo video card?) as well. I haven’t personally encountered IRIX in the wild since a company I worked at in 2003. I suppose SGI has always had a cool factor but it’s unusual seeing it come up in a cluster of mentions like this.
  • chriswep an hour ago |
    It seems to me that `rg` is the number one most important part that enables LLMs to be smart agents in a codebase. Who would have thought that a code search tool would enable AGI?
  • brtkwr 43 minutes ago |
    Hasn’t someone rewritten ripgrep in rust by now? C’mon it’s 2026. Oh wait it was written in Rust (back in 2016).
    • masklinn 13 minutes ago |
      The fun part is it is pretty easy to “rewrite” ripgrep in rust, because burntsushi wrote it as a ton of crates which you can reuse. So you can reuse this to build your own with blackjack and hookers.