Just kidding. This thing is nowhere close to ack.
- Make it compile.
- Make it run.
- Make it behave correctly.
- Make it fast.
It's somewhere between 2 and 3 right now.
notes:
ack annoyances:
only uses one core
can't prioritize certain dirs/files
can't say "just ignore stuff that's in .gitignore/.svnignore/.hgignore/whatever"
can't easily introspect what files are being ignored/searched
poor/no support for searching/ignoring files with no dots in their name or dots at the beginning or multiple dots, etc
ack is a giant hack. it's full of crazy stuff that perl programmers do. tons of special-cases and other dumb stuff
ack hates anything that isn't utf-8
by default, it hardly searches anything. you have to edit your ~/.ackrc to get useful behavior
grep is on the opposite side of the spectrum
no easy way to show skipped files in a directory hierarchy
if there are no matches, ack doesn't automatically try some less accurate searches
concrete example: if no matches, enable ignore case and redo the search
basic options:
follow/don't follow symlinks
recurse dirs
ack awesomeness (aka stuff I want to copy):
can easily skip files (unlike grep)
faster than grep
integrates with textmate (ackmate)
code search: common actions
find vars or functions with same/similar names in the project
pie-in-the-sky stuff
integrate with filetype-specific libraries (libxml2 etc) for extra functionality
concrete example: searching some xml files
instead of printing the context lines (prev/next 5 lines), print everything in the local dom scope
track code dependencies (this is almost certainly a different product/program)