How can I search a specific list of files with ripgrep?

Question

I've got a list of files that I would like to search for a pattern with ripgrep.

How can this be done?

score 29 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 15 '19 at 21:44

29

ripgrep accepts file paths as arguments. So just pass your files as arguments:

rg pattern file1 file2 ...

If your list is in a file, with one path per line, then use xargs:

xargs -d '\n' -a list-file rg pattern

Or if it's a list generated from find, then:

find ./ ... -print0 | xargs -0 rg pattern

answered Jan 15 '19 at 21:44

BurntSushi5

1

Searching only some specific file can be done like `find . -iname '*finde_me*.md' -print0 | xargs -0 rg 'search term'` – Norfeldt Aug 07 '20 at 09:41
7

In that case, you might as well just use `rg 'search term' -g '*finde_me*.md'` :-) – BurntSushi5 Aug 07 '20 at 13:17
Nice! Started using ripgrep a couple of weeks ago and it's truly amazing! Learning so much! – Norfeldt Aug 07 '20 at 13:31
Is there a performance benefit in not using xargs, find, etc? – Cigarette Smoking Man Aug 05 '22 at 10:00
There might be, given that, e.g., `find` is single threaded and ripgrep is multi-threaded. Why not try both and compare them for your use case? – BurntSushi5 Aug 05 '22 at 14:08

1 Answers1