Ripgrep

Ripgrep (rg) - Fast Text Search Tool

Overview

Ripgrep is a line-oriented search tool that recursively searches directories for regex patterns. It's 10-100x faster than grep and respects .gitignore by default. Use it instead of grep, find, or manually reading large files.

Core principle: When you need to find text in files, use ripgrep. Don't read entire files into context when you can search them.

When to Use

Use ripgrep when:

• Searching for text patterns across a codebase or directory
• Finding all occurrences of a function, variable, or string
• Searching through books, documentation, or large text files
• Files are too large to read fully into context
• Looking for specific content in many files at once
• Finding files that contain (or don't contain) certain patterns
• Extracting matching lines for analysis

Don't use when:

• You need the full file content (use Read tool)
• Simple glob pattern matching for filenames only (use Glob tool)
• You need structured data extraction (consider jq, awk)

Quick Reference