When I do
ack -G "^.*$" "foo"
I get results... but when I put
-G "^.*$"
or
-G="^.*$"
or
-G
"^.*$"
in my `~/.ackrc/ I get no results... Does anyone know if -G can be used in ackrc?
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Just as a sanity check, you aren't using `--noenv` are you? Do other options work when placed in `~/.ackrc`? – Greg Hewgill Mar 24 '11 at 21:03
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Yeah, I removed everything from `~/.ackrc` except `-G="^.*$"` and ran `ack "foo"` from the command line. Nothing showed up... but then when I remove the line from `~/.ackrc` I get results for foo. – Aaron Gibralter Mar 24 '11 at 21:19
2 Answers
4
It's a quoting problem. When executed on the command line:
$ ack -G="^.*$"
ack actually sees the following command line option (after quote processing by the shell)
-G=^.*$
without the quotes. Since the ~/.ackrc file is read without shell quote processing, place the above line without quotes into ~/.ackrc.
Update: That was only half of it. It looks like you need to use the following line in ~/.ackrc:
-G^.*$
I'm not completely sure why the = is not permitted there, but including it makes it part of the pattern, which is obviously not what you want.
Greg Hewgill
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Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to make a difference. When I have `-G=^.*$` as the only line in `~/.ackrc` I still get no results... – Aaron Gibralter Mar 24 '11 at 21:26
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What are you actually trying to do with that? Would the `-a` option work for you? – Greg Hewgill Mar 24 '11 at 21:27
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I'm trying to ignore directories with a little intelligence. I'm trying to do something like this: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2799570/ack-excluding-only-one-directory-but-keeping-all-others-with-the-same-name. I want to `--ignore-dir` `vendor` but not `app/javascripts/vendor`... – Aaron Gibralter Mar 24 '11 at 21:39
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2BINGO! You're update fixed it. I basically wanted this: `-G^(?!vendor|log|tmp|doc|coverage|public/app).*$` to have more fine-grained control over the way directories are ignored. – Aaron Gibralter Mar 24 '11 at 21:42
