Searching files and filenames with ag

Posted on Friday 03/30 at 14:03

I use a folder called projects for holding my GTD projects, in Markdown files. I wanted a way to search for the occurrence of a word - say, fritz if I wanted to message my friend @fritzvd - but also to find that word if it was in a filename. I use the silver searcher (ag) because it is faster than grep, but I couldn’t find a way in the man files to combine both -i for ignore case and -g for finding patterns in filenames. A short trip to my ~.bash_profile later, and I’ve got this:

function aga() {
  ag -i $1
  ag -ig $1
}

Maybe not the most convenient, but it should work for now.

Ironically, I had to use grep to find that command in my .bash_profile, because ag doesn’t have the -n5 command I wanted. Let’s fix that.
…
A quick trip to the man ag files later, and I’ve got this: cat ~/.bash_profile | ag 'ag' -C5. Glad I won’t have to see that problem again.

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Beam me home, Scotty!