silver_searcher (ag) with multiple search expressions?

Question

Does silver_searcher support specifying multiple search expressions something like -e in grep?

I could not find any option in the document/help.

Pablo Bianchi · Answer 1 · 2022-03-29T22:50:39.423

16

You might want to search with both Boolean operators:

AND: ag -l pattern1 | xargs ag -l pattern2 | xargs ag 'pattern1|pattern2'
- Add -d '\n' to xargs to handle spaces on filenames.
OR: ag 'pattern1|pattern2'
NOT: ag -v 'pattern'

-l --files-with-matches: Only print the names of files containing matches, not the matching lines. An empty query will print all files that would be searched.

-v --invert-match: Match every line not containing the specified pattern.

edited Mar 29 '22 at 22:50

answered May 18 '18 at 04:43

Pablo Bianchi

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`Add -d '\n' to xargs to handle spaces on filenames.` That's a really useful tip. I usually try to mess with `-0`. What do you do if the path has parentheses or ~ in it? – Daniel Kaplan Mar 08 '22 at 23:38

score 9 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 11 '17 at 18:14

According to the documentation, it doesn't support multiple search patterns. That said, it does support using parallel, so you can fire off multiple instances of ag for a multi-search:

echo "foo\nbar\nbaz" | parallel 'ag --parallel --color "{}" *'

The output using the --parallel switch will be filename, linenumber and match. If that's too fancy, you can always use the OR operator in your pattern search:

ag --color "foo|bar|baz" *

score 5 · Answer 3 · answered Jan 11 '17 at 18:00

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Yes, you can search for multiple patterns by separating each pattern with a vertical line character (|):

ag 'pattern1|pattern2'

answered Jan 11 '17 at 18:00

Chad Nouis

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silver_searcher (ag) with multiple search expressions?

3 Answers3