hgrep is a grep tool to search files with given pattern and print the matched code snippets with human-friendly syntax highlighting. In short, it's a fusion of bat and grep or other alternatives like ripgrep.
This is similar to -C option of grep command, but hgrep focuses on human readable outputs. hgrep is useful to survey the
matches with contexts around them. When some matches are near enough, hgrep prints the lines within one code snippet. Unlike
grep -C, hgrep adopts some heuristics around blank lines to determine efficient number of context lines.
Example:
```sh
grep -nH pattern -R ./dir | hgrep
rg -nH pattern ./dir | hgrep ```
As an optional feature, hgrep has builtin grep implementation thanks to ripgrep as library. It's a subset of rg command. And
it's faster when there are so many matches since everything is done in the same process.
Example:
```sh
hgrep pattern ./dir ```
Please see the usage section for more details.
Visit the releases page and download the zip file for your platform. Unarchive the file and put the executable file
in some $PATH directory. Currently the following targets are supported. If you want a binary for some other platform, feel free
to make an issue to request it.
By adding hgrep repository as Homebrew tap, hgrep command can be installed and managed via Homebrew. Currently only for x86_64
macOS and Linux.
sh
brew tap "rhysd/hgrep" "https://github.com/rhysd/hgrep"
brew install hgrep
On macOS, you can install hgrep with the following commands through MacPorts:
sh
sudo port selfupdate
sudo port install hgrep
sh
cargo install hgrep
If you always use hgrep with reading the grep output from stdin and don't want the builtin ripgrep feature, it can be omitted. This reduces the number of dependencies, installation time, and the binary size.
sh
cargo install hgrep --no-default-features
grep -nH outputhgrep takes grep results via stdin. Since hgrep expects file paths and line numbers in each line of the output, -nH is
necessary at grep command.
sh
grep -nH pattern -R paths... | hgrep [options...]
grep alternative tools like ripgrep, ag, pt, ... are also available because they can output results compatible with
grep -nH.
sh
rg -nH pattern paths... | hgrep [options...]
When you want a pager, please use external commands like less.
sh
grep -nH pattern -R paths... | hgrep [options...] | less -R
By default, hgrep shows at least 5 lines and at most 5 lines as context of a match. How many context lines is determined by some
heuristics around blank lines for efficiency. Minimum context lines can be specified by -c and Maximum context lines can be
specified by -C. If you don't want the heuristics, specify the same value to the options like -c 10 -C 10.
```sh
grep -nH pattern -R paths... | hgrep -c 10 -C 20 ```
Optionally hgrep provides builtin grep implementation. It is a subset of ripgrep since it's built using ripgrep as library. And
it's faster when there are so many matches because everything is done in the same process. The builtin grep feature is enabled by
default and can be omitted by installing it with --no-default-features.
sh
hgrep [options...] pattern paths...
Though almost all useful options are implemented, the builtin grep implementation is a subset of ripgrep. If you need full
functionalities, use rg command and eat its output by hgrep via stdin. Currently there are the following restrictions.
--mmap flag is specified--type-list).ripgreprc config file is not supportedDefault color theme is Monokai Extended respecting bat command's default. Other theme can be specified via --theme option.
To know names of themes, try --list-themes flag.
sh
grep -nH ... | hgrep --theme Nord
And hgrep respects BAT_THEME environment variable.
sh
export BAT_THEME=OneHalfDark
Default layout is 'grid' respecting bat command's default. To print the matches without border lines, --no-grid option is
available.
sh
grep -nH ... | hgrep --no-grid
And hgrep respects BAT_STYLE environment variable. When plain or header or numbers is set, hgrep removes border lines.
sh
export BAT_STYLE=numbers
--min-context NUM (-c): Minimum lines of leading and trailing context surrounding each match. Default value is 5--max-context NUM (-C): Maximum lines of leading and trailing context surrounding each match. Default value is 10--no-grid (-G): Remove border lines for more compact output. --grid flag is an opposite of this flag--tab NUM: Number of spaces for tab character. Set 0 to pass tabs through. Default value is 4--theme THEME: Theme for syntax highlighting. Default value is the same as bat command--list-themes: List all theme names available for --theme option--no-ignore: Don't respect ignore files (.gitignore, .ignore, etc.)--ignore-case (-i): When this flag is provided, the given patterns will be searched case insensitively--smart-case (-S): Search case insensitively if the pattern is all lowercase. Search case sensitively otherwise--glob GLOB... (-g): Include or exclude files and directories for searching that match the given glob--glob-case-insensitive: Process glob patterns given with the -g/--glob flag case insensitively--fixed-strings (-F): Treat the pattern as a literal string instead of a regular expression--word-regexp (-w): Only show matches surrounded by word boundaries--follow (-L): When this flag is enabled, hgrep will follow symbolic links while traversing directories--multiline (-U): Enable matching across multiple lines--multiline-dotall: Enable "dot all" in your regex pattern, which causes '.' to match newlines when multiline searching is enabled--crlf: about(r"When enabled, hgrep will treat CRLF (\r\n) as a line terminator instead of just \n. This flag is useful on Windows--mmap: Search using memory maps when possible. mmap is disabled by default unlike hgrep--max-count NUM (-m): Limit the number of matching lines per file searched to NUM--max-depth NUM: Limit the depth of directory traversal to NUM levels beyond the paths given--max-filesize NUM: Ignore files larger than NUM in size--line-regexp (-x): Only show matches surrounded by line boundaries. This is equivalent to putting ^...$ around all of the search patterns--pcre2 (-P): When this flag is present, hgrep will use the PCRE2 regex engine instead of its default regex engine--type TYPE (-t): Only search files matching TYPE. This option is repeatable--type-not TYPE (-T): Do not search files matching TYPE. Inverse of --type. This option is repeatable--type-list: Show all supported file types and their corresponding globsSee --help for full list of options.
Shell completion script for hgrep command is available. --generate-completion-script option generates completion script and
prints it to stdout. Bash, Zsh, Fish, PowerShell, Elvish are supported. See --help for
argument of the option.
This is an example to setup the completion script on Zsh.
```sh
hgrep --generate-completion-script zsh > ~/.zsh/site-functions/_hgrep ```
Some other alternatives instead of using hgrep.
ripgrep and batripgrep and bat are well-designed tools so they can be used as building parts of small script.
```sh rg -nH ... | while IFS= read -r line; do # Parse $line and calculate the range of snippet and highlighted lines file=... lines=... range=...
# Show matched snippet bat -H ${lines} -r ${range} ${file} done ```
It works fine but hgrep is more optimized for this usage.
bat process per matched line.fzf with bat preview windowFuzzy finder like fzf provides a preview window functionality and bat can print the match in the preview window.
sh
grep -nH ... | \
fzf --preview='bat --pager never --color always -H {2} -r {2}: -p {1}' --delimiter=:
This usage is great when you need the incremental search, but you need to check each preview of matches one by one.
hgrep focuses on surveying all the matches.
Please make an issue on GitHub. Ensure to describe how to reproduce the bug.
hgrep is distributed under the MIT license.