ripgrep
The search tool I reach for dozens of times a day — fast enough that it changes how you work.
Toolsrg searches a directory tree for a pattern, the way grep -r does — but it respects
.gitignore, skips binary files, and is fast enough that you stop thinking about where to
search and just search everything.
Why it’s worth it
- Sensible defaults. Recursive, ignore-aware and coloured out of the box. The flags I used to
type every time with
grepare simply the behaviour. - Speed changes habits. When a whole-repo search comes back instantly, you use it to navigate instead of clicking through folders.
- Everywhere. Many editors — VS Code included — use it under the hood for their search panels.
The three commands I actually use
rg 'TODO' # search everything below here
rg -t ts 'useState' # only TypeScript files
rg -l 'deprecated' src/ # just list matching files