how to issue a `start of string` pattern for ag

Question

I want to find every file in from the current dir and downwards whose filename starts with foo using ag(the silver searcher). I have tried:

ag -g '^foo' 
ag -g '\^foo' 
ag -g '\Afoo'

no luck.

But it should work as ag implements PCRE syntax, right? What am I missing here?

@ThomasN, I specifically chose `ag` because it ignores patterns inside .gitignore and such, and provides me a way to match strings inside the files. With `ag` I could, for example, use -G and restrict my **grep like search** to the files that match the `^foo` pattern. — ninrod, Aug 11 '16 at 21:54

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Feb 02 '18 at 14:11

3

If you do not specify a directory, and therefore search in the current directory, ag seems to prepend './' before each path.

thinkbox ~% mkdir foo
thinkbox ~% cd foo
thinkbox ~/foo% touch bar
thinkbox ~/foo% ag -g '^bar' # not found            
thinkbox 1? ~/foo% ag -g '^\./bar' # found
bar

answered Feb 02 '18 at 14:11

Harm

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3

Indeed; this looks correct whereas the other answer says ag matches against the full path, which doesn't sound quite right. – dhag Feb 02 '18 at 15:02

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 12 '16 at 00:39

1

turns out that ag matches against the full path name of the file. So we have to change the regex in the lines of:

ag -g '/foo[^/]*$'

credits to bmalehorn

answered Aug 12 '16 at 00:39

ninrod

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2
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how to issue a `start of string` pattern for ag

2 Answers2