ag: search exact string, not a pattern

Question

My Problem

I'm searching for Application(service) in my files using ag. Since ag treats strings as regular expression patterns, I have to escape the parens and use:

ag 'Application\(service\)'

This is cumbersome and easy to miss, especially when there are multiple regex symbols in my search.

What have I tried

Search the manual
Escape the regex chars (works, but error-prone)

My Question

How can I instruct ag to treat the search term as a literal string, instead of a regex pattern?

Try using quoted literal and place your string between `\Q` and `\E` like this `\QApplication(service)\E` and as I know `ag` tool uses PCRE based engine so it should work most likely, though not sure as never used that tool. — Pushpesh Kumar Rajwanshi, May 26 '19 at 15:51
@georg Great, don't know how I missed it. Answer it and I'd be happy to upvote. — Adam Matan, May 26 '19 at 19:00
This is less of a programming question and more of a "how do I use ag?" question. — melpomene, May 26 '19 at 19:09

score 13 · Accepted Answer · answered May 26 '19 at 19:06

13

The option you're looking for is

-Q --literal: Do not parse PATTERN as a regular expression. Try to match it literally.

@ https://github.com/ggreer/the_silver_searcher/blob/master/doc/ag.1.md:

answered May 26 '19 at 19:06

georg

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ag: search exact string, not a pattern

My Problem

What have I tried

My Question

1 Answers1