Is there a way to limit :Ag output so it always takes one line and doesn't blow up the quickfix window?
At the moment it looks like this and it's awful. I can't see filenames, everything is super slow and just sucks:
Update For the record, I scrolled Quickfix window a bit to illustrate the point better. And while it is usable via :cn :cp, I would like to be able to quickly glance over the results with j k.
Looking over the man page, there does not seem to be any way to limit the output built into Ag itself.
Is there another way of limiting the line length? Actually, you do have the built in "cut" command in Linux, e.g. using it on the shell:
ag --column foo | cut -c 1-80
Limit all lines to 80.
Now we have to make ag.vim execute our specially crafted command, for which the g:agprg exists. So the first thing I thought of is this:
let g:agprg='ag --column \| cut -c 1-80' " doesn't work
The problem with this is that the ag.vim plugin just appends extra arguments to the end, and thus you end up executing something like ag --column | cut -c 1-80 something-i-searched-for. Is there a way to directly "insert" the arguments before the |?
One trick is to use a temporary shell function, like this:
f() { ag --column "$@" | cut -c 1-80 }; f something-i-search-for
Unfortunately, we still can't use this. ag.vim checks whether or not the first word is an actual command. So it complains that no executable by the name of "f()" exists. So my final solution:
let g:agprg='true ; f(){ ag --column "$@" \| cut -c 1-80 }; f'
As true always exists and doesn't do anything except return true, this works!
To your actual screenwidth instead of 80, you could use:
let g:agprg='true ; f(){ ag --column "$@" \| cut -c 1-'.(&columns - 6).' }; f'
I added the magic - 6 here to account for the extra characters Vim itself adds.
Assuming you are using this plugin. You should add this to your ~/.vimrc as specified by :h g:ag_qhandler
let g:ag_qhandler = 'copen 1'
However you can probably just do let :g:ag_qhandler = 'cc'. This will print the results at the in the bottom. When you move through the quickfix list via :cnext or :cprev it will print the current result as well.
For more help see:
:h g:ag_qhandler
:h :cope
Changing the geometry of the quickfix window won't help you fix your problem: the window is unusable not because of its size but because your search results are polluted by superfluous matches in minimized files.
Minimized JavaScript or CSS is the frontend development's equivalent of a binary and that kind of file should be ignored by search tools, indexing tools, file navigation tools and even version control tools, sometimes, because they are generally irrelevant.
Adding these lines to your ~/.agignore will make Ag search only in actual source files:
*.min*
*-min*
*_min*
*.min.*
bundle
min
vendor
tags
cscope.*
Adjust that list to your liking.
