ripgrep Explained: A Guide to the Fast Command-Line Search Tool

What it is

ripgrep (executed on the command line as rg) is a line-oriented search utility that scans directory structures recursively for regular expression patterns. In plain terms, a line-oriented tool processes documents line by line, surfacing only the specific lines where targeted terms or patterns appear. Recursive searching means the program starts in your target directory and navigates automatically through all nested subfolders, saving the user from having to run searches in each subfolder individually. Regular expressions, often referred to simply as regex, are specialized character sequences that define text patterns, making it easy to find specific words, variable names, or complex textual formats.

A defining characteristic of ripgrep is its built-in filtering behavior. Under default settings, the program respects exclusion rules defined in .gitignore, .ignore, and .rgignore files. It also skips hidden directories, hidden files, and binary files—such as compiled application binaries or media files—preventing unreadable data from cluttering the terminal screen. When an exhaustive search across all files is necessary, users can bypass this automated filtering using the command rg -uuu.

The tool provides first-class support across major desktop and server operating systems, including Windows, macOS, and Linux, with precompiled binary archives prepared for every official release. In day-to-day command-line workflows, ripgrep serves a role similar to other popular search tools such as The Silver Searcher, ack, and classic grep.

According to the project README, ripgrep achieves its performance through careful design and integration with the Rust programming language regex engine. The underlying engine relies on finite automata—state-based mathematical models that evaluate patterns step by step—paired with SIMD (Single Instruction, Multiple Data) processor instructions to scan text quickly. Unicode decoding is compiled directly into the deterministic finite automaton (DFA) engine, allowing full Unicode support to remain active without sacrificing search performance. In addition, ripgrep utilizes a lock-free parallel directory iterator provided by the crossbeam and ignore libraries, applies ignore rules simultaneously across multiple patterns using a RegexSet, and dynamically selects between memory-mapped files and buffered streaming depending on whether it is examining single documents or entire directory trees.

What it can do

ripgrep offers a broad set of capabilities designed for code search, file navigation, and textual data extraction:

• Automatic and Manual Filtering: In addition to automatically bypassing hidden files, binary assets, and gitignored files, ripgrep can restrict or exclude specific file types. For example, executing rg -tpy foo limits a search query exclusively to Python files, while running rg -Tjs foo excludes JavaScript files from search results. Users can also define custom rules to recognize new file types.
• Familiar Grep Features: The tool retains core features standard in traditional grep utilities, including the ability to display contextual lines around matches, search for multiple patterns in a single command, highlight matching text in color, and operate with Unicode support enabled by default.
• PCRE2 Engine Support: Although ripgrep uses Rust’s regex engine by default, it includes optional support for the PCRE2 regex engine. Users can enable PCRE2 with the -P/--pcre2 flag, the --auto-hybrid-regex option (which switches to PCRE2 only when needed), or the --engine (default|pcre2|auto) configuration. This provides access to advanced pattern-matching constructs, such as look-around assertions and backreferences, which are not supported by the default engine.
• Output Replacements: The tool provides rudimentary replacement support, allowing users to rewrite output lines based on the matched text before displaying them in the console.
• Diverse Character Encodings: While UTF-8 is the default standard, ripgrep can search files encoded in formats such as latin-1, GBK, EUC-JP, Shift_JIS, and UTF-16 (with partial automatic detection), configured via the -E/--encoding flag.
• Compressed File Scanning: Using the -z/--search-zip flag, ripgrep can search directly inside compressed archives and files, supporting common formats like gzip, bzip2, xz, lz4, lzma, brotli, and zstandard.
• Custom Preprocessors: The program supports user-supplied input preprocessing filters. This allows users to connect external scripts to handle tasks such as extracting plain text from PDF documents, decrypting protected files, or handling unsupported compression algorithms prior to scanning.
• Configuration Files and Multiline Queries: ripgrep supports configuration files for persisting preferred default flags, provides multiline search capabilities that locate patterns spanning across line breaks, and supports passthru functionality.

According to the project README, performance comparisons illustrate how ripgrep handles diverse search workloads on an Intel i9-12900K 5.2 GHz benchmark system. In an example searching the Linux kernel source repository for whole words matching [A-Z]+_SUSPEND, ripgrep completed the task in 0.082 seconds using rg -n -w '[A-Z]+_SUSPEND'. When bypassing gitignore rules to search only C files with rg -uuu -tc -n -w '[A-Z]+_SUSPEND', it recorded 0.063 seconds. In a single large, uncompressed 13GB in-memory file (OpenSubtitles.raw.en.gz), running rg -w 'Sherlock [A-Z]\w+' finished in 1.042 seconds. The README also notes that when match counts are very high—such as running rg the across millions of lines—run times across search tools level out, because handling and formatting matches becomes the primary bottleneck rather than regex scanning algorithms.

How to get started

The primary executable for ripgrep is named rg. For users who want to explore ripgrep before installing it on their local systems, the project documentation points to an unofficial interactive tutorial at https://codapi.org/try/ripgrep/ and an online web playground at https://codapi.org/ripgrep/.

Precompiled binary archives are provided on GitHub for Windows, macOS, and Linux, with static binaries available for Linux and Windows systems. ripgrep is also widely packaged across popular package managers:

For macOS users on Homebrew or Linux users on Linuxbrew:

$ brew install ripgrep

For MacPorts users on macOS:

$ sudo port install ripgrep

For Windows users using Chocolatey:

$ choco install ripgrep

For Windows users using Scoop:

$ scoop install ripgrep

For Windows users using Winget:

$ winget install BurntSushi.ripgrep.MSVC

For Arch Linux users:

$ sudo pacman -S ripgrep

For Fedora users:

$ sudo dnf install ripgrep

For openSUSE users:

$ sudo zypper install ripgrep

For Debian and Ubuntu systems:

$ sudo apt-get install ripgrep

Rust programmers can install ripgrep using Cargo:

$ cargo install ripgrep

Alternatively, prebuilt binaries can be installed via cargo-binstall:

$ cargo binstall ripgrep

To build ripgrep directly from source, the system must have Rust 1.96.0 or newer installed:

$ git clone https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep
$ cd ripgrep
$ cargo build --release
$ ./target/release/rg --version

If optional PCRE2 regex engine support is desired when compiling from source:

$ cargo build --release --features 'pcre2'

Once installed, queries can be run directly from the command line. To search all files without automatic filtering:

rg -uuu

To restrict a search query to Python files or exclude JavaScript files:

rg -tpy foo

rg -Tjs foo

To search for a specific word pattern while displaying line numbers:

rg -n -w '[A-Z]+_SUSPEND'

To run a query across a high-frequency search term:

rg the

Pricing and requirements

Pricing and plans are subject to the official page at https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep. ripgrep is distributed as open-source software, dual-licensed under the terms of the MIT License or the UNLICENSE.

Regarding system requirements, ripgrep provides first-class support on Windows, macOS, and Linux, and packages are also maintained across BSD platforms (FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD) and Haiku. Precompiled Linux and Windows binaries are built as static executables. When building from source, ripgrep requires the Rust compiler version 1.96.0 or newer. Compiling with optional PCRE2 support requires a system PCRE2 library via pkg-config or a C compiler to build PCRE2 from source and link it statically into the executable.

Who it is for

ripgrep is designed for software developers, system administrators, DevOps professionals, and command-line users who regularly search through codebases and local directory hierarchies. The project README highlights that it is suitable for users who value fast search performance, automatic filtering that honors .gitignore rules, fewer software bugs, and out-of-the-box Unicode support.

The project documentation also outlines specific situations where ripgrep may not be the ideal choice:

• Users who require strict compliance with POSIX standards or need a tool that is ubiquitously pre-installed across all Unix-like platforms, where standard grep is the recommended option.
• Users who rely on specific niche features or distinct behaviors in other search utilities that ripgrep does not include.
• Workloads involving specific performance edge cases where alternative tools perform more favorably.
• Systems where ripgrep cannot be installed or is not supported for the host platform.

Alternatives

The Silver Searcher is an open-source command-line tool designed for searching code across directories.

ugrep is a file search utility that supports querying file systems and pattern matching.

Sources

• https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep
• https://github.com/ggreer/the_silver_searcher
• https://github.com/Genivia/ugrep