Using ack to search inside files with no extensions

Question

I have some text "bar" contained in files FOO and foo.cc.

Is there a way to tell ack-grep to search inside files with no extension (namely FOO)?

I've tried something like this:

ack-grep --type-set=foo=FOO bar

which returns the text in foo.cc, but not file FOO.

I've also added the --type-set to my .ackrc file, calling

ack-grep --help-types

shows that ack-grep is looking for .FOO files.

James Aylett · Accepted Answer · 2013-07-24T20:09:46.257

2

You can combine ack-grep's -a (search everything) with -G (only search files that match a given regex). Something like:

ack-grep -a -G '^[^.]+$' what-to-search-for

should do the trick.

Under ack2 you have to define a custom type:

ack-grep --WANTED --type-set WANTED:match:^[^.]+$ what-to-search-for

works for me.

edited Jul 24 '13 at 20:09

answered Jul 19 '13 at 16:53

James Aylett

1

This only works for ack 1.x. The `-a` and `-G` flags have been removed in ack 2.0 because they are no longer necessary. – Andy Lester Jul 20 '13 at 05:12
@AndyLester good point, thanks. Updated for ack2. (I'd argue that ack1 is more obvious in this case, but hey.) – James Aylett Jul 24 '13 at 20:10

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 23 '14 at 04:52

2

My ack is of version 2.12. Bellow command should work.

$ ack --type-set make:is:Makefile --type=make string-pattern

So similarly,

$ ack --type-set foo:is:FOO --type=foo string-pattern

answered Jul 23 '14 at 04:52

Hong

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Jul 20 '13 at 05:14

1

You cannot do what you want with ack 1.x. You need to upgrade to ack 2.0.

ack 1.x did not have a way to deal with files without extensions. ack 2.0 adds a much more flexible file-specification system.

answered Jul 20 '13 at 05:14

Andy Lester

3 Answers3