How can I get ack to return results?

Question

I know there's some text inside a file under $SOURCE/frameworks/base/res/res/values/strings.xml that says "hotspot," but if I am in the source directory and execute ack hotspot, I get "no file or directory."

This is my first time trying to navigate source code of a huge repo, so please be kind. Thank you.

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 06 '14 at 21:18

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I finally discovered why ack wasn't working. Via apt-get, ack is a Kanji code converter. ack is therefore called ack-grep in Ubuntu-based distributions.

answered Jul 06 '14 at 21:18

Taylor Kline

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You may be pleased to learn that the patch that renamed `ack` to `ack-grep` on Debian (and Ubuntu) has been removed. So you can simply invoke `ack` in Debian Sid (and probably in the next Ubuntu 14.10). – Christophe Vu-Brugier Jul 06 '14 at 21:48
Glad to hear it. Right now, I'm simply using an alias. – Taylor Kline Jul 06 '14 at 22:31

How can I get ack to return results?

1 Answers1