ack Command Examples

A search tool like grep, optimized for developers. See also: rg, which is much faster. More information: https://beyondgrep.com/documentation.

• Search for files containing a string or regular expression in the current directory recursively:

ack "{{search_pattern}}"

• Search for a case-insensitive pattern:

ack {{[-i|--ignore-case]}} "{{search_pattern}}"

• Search for lines matching a pattern, printing [o]nly the matched text and not the rest of the line:

ack {{[-o|--output='$&']}} "{{search_pattern}}"

• Limit search to files of a specific type:

ack {{[-t|--type]}} {{ruby}} "{{search_pattern}}"

• Do not search in files of a specific type:

ack {{[-t|--type]}} no{{ruby}} "{{search_pattern}}"

• Count the total number of matches found:

ack {{[-c|--count]}} {{[-h|--no-filename]}} "{{search_pattern}}"

• Print the file names and the number of matches for each file only:

ack {{[-c|--count]}} {{[-l|--files-with-matches]}} "{{search_pattern}}"

• List all the values that can be used with --type:

ack --help-types