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 ```
hgrep provides two printers to pritn match results for your use case. Please see 'bat printer v.s. syntect printer'
section for the comparison.
syntect printer: Our own implementation of printer using syntect library. Performance and its output layout are more optimizedbat printer: Printer built on top of bat's pretty printer implementation, which is battle-tested and provides some unique features
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
To install pre-built binaries using the package manager, simply run:
sh
pkgin install hgrep
Or, if you prefer to build from source,
sh
cd /usr/pkgsrc/textproc/hgrep
make install
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 --features bat-printer,syntect-printer
To customize features on installation, please see the following 'Feature flags' section for more details.
All features are optional and enabled by default. At least bat-printer or syntect-printer needs to be enabled.
| Feature | Description |
|-------------------|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| ripgrep | Built-in grep implementation built on top of ripgrep as library. Performance is better than piping rg in some cases. |
| bat-printer | Printer implementation built on top of bat's pretty printer, which is battle-tested and provides some unique features. |
| syntect-printer | Our own printer implementation built with syntect library. Performance and output layout are optimized for our use cases. |
For the differences of bat-printer and syntect-printer, see 'bat printer v.s. syntect printer' section.
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. $COLUMNS needs to be passed because terminal width is fixed to
80 characters when the process is piped. If you frequently use a pager, 'Set default command options'
section would describe a better way.
sh
grep -nH pattern -R paths... | hgrep --term-width "$COLUMNS" [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 feature flags.
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 supportedbat printer v.s. syntect printerhgrep provides two printers to print match results; bat printer and syntect printer. bat printer is a printer
implementation built on top of bat's pretty printer. And syntect printer is our own printer implementation built with
syntect library. --printer (or -p) flag can specify the printer to print results.
At first, there was bat printer only. And then syntect printer was implemented for better performance and optimized layout.
bat printer
bat command. Its output layout is the same as bat command. It can load bat's assets cache--no-wrap is specifiedsyntect printer
--background) is supported. This is useful when your favorite theme does not fit to your
terminal's background colorCurrently bat is the default painter (unless bat-printer feature is disabled) because the implementation is not mature yet.
But in 0.2 release, changing the default painter to syntect is planned.
syntect printer is better?Syntax highlighting is very CPU heavy task. Many regular expression matchings happen at each line. For accurate syntax highlighting, a highlighter needs to parse the syntax at the beginning of the file. It means that printing a match at the last line of file is much heavier task than printing a match of the first line of the file.
Since syntect printer is designed for calculating syntax highlights per file in parallel, its performance is much better. It's
2x~4x faster than bat printer in some experiments. More match results gets better performance.
In contrast, bat is not designed for multi-threads. It's not possible to share bat::PrettyPrinter instance among threads. It
means that printing match results including syntax highlighting must be done in a single thread.
| syntect printer sequence | bat printer sequence |
|----------------------------|------------------------|
| 
| 
|
Default 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
Wrapping hgrep command with shell's alias command works fine for setting default command options.
For example, if you're using Bash, put the following line in your .bash_profile.
```sh
alias hgrep='hgrep --printer syntect --hidden' ```
If you prefer a pager, try the following wrappre function. --term-width propagates the correct width of terminal window.
```sh
function hgrep() { command hgrep -p syntect --term-width "$COLUMNS" "$@" | less -R } ```
--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--printer: Printer to print the match results. 'bat' or 'syntect' is available. Default value is 'bat'--term-width: Width (number of characters) of terminal windowripgrep feature
--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 globssyntect-printer feature
--background: Paint background colors. This is useful when your favorite theme does not fit to your terminal's background colorbat-printer feature
--custom-assets: Load bat's custom assets from cache. Note that this flag may not work with some version of bat command--no-wrap: Disable text wrapping. Text wrapping is enabled by default for bat printerSee --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.