ack

Links

http://betterthangrep.com/ ack is a tool like grep, aimed at programmers with large trees of source code.

From the man pages:

Why is it called ack if it’s called ack-grep?

The name of the program is “ack”. Some packagers have called it “ack-grep” when creating packages because there’s already a package out there called “ack” that has nothing to do with this ack.

I suggest you make a symlink named ack that points to ack-grep because one of the crucial benefits of ack is having a name that’s so short and simple to type.

To do that, run: ln -s /usr/bin/ack-grep /usr/bin/ack

Install

Ubuntu

It is probably a good idea to remove ack (Kanji code checker) from your system:

sudo apt remove ack

Note: Create a new bash shell after removing this application:

sudo apt install ack-grep

Configuration

We want to use ack rather than ack-grep as it is shorter to type - so either create a symlink (as suggested above), or create a bash script e.g:

vim ~/opt/ack

#!/bin/sh
ack-grep "$@"

chmod +x ~/opt/ack

The contents of my ~/.ackrc file are as follows:

# Create txt file type:
--type-set=rst=.rst
# SLS
--type-set=salt=.sls,.conf,.ini
# CSS
--type-add=css=.less
# Ruby
--type-add=ruby=.haml,.rake

Usage

ack query
ack --type python query
ack --type xml query
ack --type xml --type python query

Note: The ack-grep command can be used instead of ack if you haven’t set-up a symbolic link or script.

Shortcut

Add the following to ~/.bashrc:

alias grepp='ack-grep --type python'
alias grepx='ack-grep --type xml'