New blog post.

_posts/2016-03-28-sift.md

@@ -0,0 +1,66 @@
+---
+title: "sift"
+tags: ["Tools"]
+layout: "post"
+comments: true
+link: false
+---
+
+Some time ago I came across [sift](https://sift-tool.org/), a "fast and powerful
+open source alternative to [grep](https://www.gnu.org/software/grep/)".
+[ack](http://beyondgrep.com/) has long been my weapon of choice, but it depends
+on [Perl](https://www.perl.org/) while sift is distributed as a single
+executable.
+
+After using it as my daily driver for a couple of months I've noticed that it's
+a worthy competitor to [git-grep](https://git-scm.com/docs/git-grep), although
+the latter is still a bit faster.
+
+## Configuration
+
+sift has a feature, `--write-config`, which enables you to save your
+configuration directly on the command line:
+
+```
+sift --smart-case --filename --line-number --group --column --git --exclude-files=tags,.gitattributes --write-config
+```
+
+The `--git` flag makes it possible to ignore patterns from a project's `.gitignore`
+file, which is super nice.
+
+## Fuzzy file finding
+
+You can use the flag `--targets` to use sift as a fuzzy file finder:
+
+```
+sift --targets --ext js
+```
+
+You can also supply a pattern in order to narrow down the search:
+
+```
+sift --targets --ext js test
+```
+
+## Integrating with Vim
+
+To use sift in [Vim](http://www.vim.org/), configure the `grepprg` and
+`grepformat` options:
+
+``` viml
+set grepprg=sift\ --no-group\ --no-color
+set grepformat=%f:%l:%c:%m,%f:%l:%m
+```
+
+Depending on how you've configured it you may need to add additional flags. In
+order for the above `grepformat` to work you have to have `--filename`,
+`--line-number` and `--column` enabled.
+
+To use it as an indexer for [CtrlP](https://github.com/ctrlpvim/ctrlp.vim), add
+this:
+
+``` viml
+let g:ctrlp_user_command = 'sift --no-conf --ignore-case --no-color --no-group --git --targets --path "" %s'
+```
+
+And you're good to go!