For dev work, I still prefer cscope for searching for things, at least in all supported languages. cscope is _fantastic_. Combined with a $CSCOPE_EDITOR that does the right thing (for me: open $EDITOR in the background in a new tmux window titled after the file being edited, returning control to cscope for additional searches / opens).
What's really good about cscope is this:
- multiple search types such as: where is this symbol assigned to, what functions call this function, where is this defined, where is this referenced, and so on
- curses and CLI interface
- the curses interface is very nice
- the CLI interface is very useful for integration into your $EDITOR, whatever it might be
The only downside is that cscope only supports C-like languages and a few others like yacc. So this works for C, C++, and Java (to a lesser extent), but does not work at all for languages like, say, Python.
These look awesome! If you're willing to put in that much effort to learn new tools though, could also try zsh or fish. The built-in autocomplete of both over bash is on another level.
There are good reasons to use Zsh beyond its autocomplete system. Zsh parameter expansions are a beautiful thing. When I write CLI scripts, I don't write Bash scripts, I write Zsh scripts.
Documentation, however, is lacking. It's not quite as bad as Vim, but there are massive swaths of the program, entire subsystems, that are more or less completely undocumented. It's very user unfriendly.
Also, the ad-hoc "plugin" ecosystem is in a strange and fragmented state. It's a shame that more people don't write actual modules in C (yes, Zsh has a native module system), but then again, is the API even documented?
The thing about Fish vs Zsh is that Zsh, with all those pre-command hooks running in Zsh scripts to replicate out-of-the-box Fish functionality, it's slow. I haven't tried compiling my plugin files (yes, Zsh also has a byte compiler), so maybe that would help. But I've occasionally found myself poring over logs from zsh -x to see diagose my 200ms delay.
One more thing about Zsh: it has emacs syndrome. Do your really need an FTP client and calendar built into your shell?
Zsh was undocumented in Ubuntu 14 because a bug in the package prevented the manuals from being installed and due to the way Canonical handles packages it was never fixed for the entirety of Ubuntu 14.
I am one of those few remaining Zsh users that doesn't have an 200MB baggage train on my shell though. I have a modest (2kb) .zshrc/.zshenv and for the most part just use the builtins.
> There are good reasons to use Zsh beyond its autocomplete system...
zsh also performs much better in practice than bash. Not only does it run the same code faster, it subsumes a great deal of functionality that normally requires external utility calls (which are very slow) into the shell itself.
For example:
* zsh has native floating-point arithmetic, so no need for `awk` or whatever. It can even format (digit-group) the numbers
* Regular-expression matching with =~ can be replaced by extended globs (which offer similar functionality but are significantly faster in most cases)
* `basename`, `dirname`, `readlink -m`, and `readlink -f` can be replaced by parameter-expansion modifiers
* `sort` can be replaced by parameter-expansion flags
* `grep` can be replaced by parameter-expansion flags and extended globs
* `find` (including its `-type` and `-exec` features) can be replaced by globs
* `date` can be replaced by prompt expansion or the `zsh/datetime` module
* `cp`, `mkdir`, `rm`, and so on can be replaced by the `zsh/files` module
* `stat` can be replaced by the `zsh/stat` module
* `column` can be replaced by `print -c` or `print -C`
> there are massive swaths of the program, entire subsystems, that are more or less completely undocumented
Like what? I'm not sure i'd noticed that myself. Sometimes the documentation is vague, maybe hard to find (e.g., the completion system's documentation is a bit overwhelming), but it's always been there when i went looking for it.
> Also, the ad-hoc "plugin" ecosystem is in a strange and fragmented state.
The plug-in ecosystem (i assume you mean OMZ, zplug, and stuff like that) is entirely unofficial and most of the zsh developers don't seem to care for any of it because it tends to be slow, error-prone, and often just unnecessary. It's also a major support burden for the people on IRC and in the mailing list, which doesn't endear them to it. Might be cool to have something official though.
> It's a shame that more people don't write actual modules in C (yes, Zsh has a native module system), but then again, is the API even documented?
I don't think it is, there's just an example module you can build. bash also supports loadable modules and it's the same way AFAIK.
> One more thing about Zsh: it has emacs syndrome. Do your really need an FTP client and calendar built into your shell?
Most of the weird stuff like the FTP client and calendar and Tetris game are optional modules or even just regular shell scripts. None of them are enabled by default and packagers can omit them (and they often do, especially with static builds).
> zsh also performs much better in practice than bash. Not only does it run the same code faster, it subsumes a great deal of functionality that normally requires external utility calls (which are very slow) into the shell itself.
For the uninitiated: Zsh parameters expansions and globbing (called "filename generation" in the docs) are beautiful. As I said above, I don't write Bash scripts, I write Zsh scripts, and this kind of thing is why:
% cd /tmp
% mkdir example
% cd example
% touch foo
% touch bar
% mkdir "my documents"
% touch "my documents/baz"
% tree -N
.
├── bar
├── foo
└── my documents
└── baz
1 directory, 3 files
% for f in **/*(.);
> do echo File ${f:t} lives in ${f:A:h}
> done
File bar lives in /tmp/example
File foo lives in /tmp/example
File baz lives in /tmp/example/my documents
> Like what? I'm not sure i'd noticed that myself. Sometimes the documentation is vague, maybe hard to find (e.g., the completion system's documentation is a bit overwhelming), but it's always been there when i went looking for it.
Fair enough. Although IMO "vague and disorganized" is just as good as "nonexistent". Just try reading the docs for `autoload`/`typeset`/`local`, or `zstyle` [0], or `zmodload`. The whole thing badly needs to be tagged and reverse-indexed by functionality ("how do I accomplish X"), not by flag ("what does foo -q mean?"). I wrote a long comment about this kind of documentation recently [1].
> The plug-in ecosystem (i assume you mean OMZ, zplug, and stuff like that) is entirely unofficial and most of the zsh developers don't seem to care for any of it because it tends to be slow, error-prone, and often just unnecessary. It's also a major support burden for the people on IRC and in the mailing list, which doesn't endear them to it. Might be cool to have something official though.
Yes, this. It seems like everyone and their mother at one point decided to try to write a "package manager" for Zsh.
But I think the problem with these unofficial plugins is mainly that sourcing thousands of lines of shell script on every terminal load, and running potentially dozens of functions before every command, is just plain slow. Zsh might be faster than Bash, but it's still really really slow. Just looping over 1..1000000 takes well over a second in Zsh, but less than 1/2 second in Python (which is already considered a slow language).
What I haven't tried is zcompile-ing all my startup scripts. Would that help?
And of course, actually documenting the C API and build process would be a good first step for the maintainers and devs. The example module is easy enough to follow, but actually writing a module is another matter entirely. This is especially frustrating because AFAICT Zsh builtins are themselves implemented as a statically-linked module called "zsh/main", so it must be a powerful system.
I added ctrl-P bind to open with vim. But if I realize I didn't want to do that and want to cancel then hitting ESC or ctrl-c just drops me into vim with no file. Any ideas on how to change that bind so that I can cancel back to the command line?
Edit: actually it's even worse, it seems like rg keeps running in the background even after I ctrl-c, which if I'm starting in some directory at the top of my directory tree means it runs for a long time.
I use both ag and rg with fish. For me, both are equally fast (because my repositories are small enough that it doesn't matter), but ag has better UI (I remember the --python option, but have no idea how to filter with rg). Those are about the only differences that matter to me, so I use whatever is muscle memory. Usually rg, unless I want to search for specific filetypes.
If you're wondering whether to switch, don't bother unless you find ag slow.
Fish, on the other hand, I can't live without. I recommend fisherman and z, and a few other plugins I forget now (I use one that shows a notification if your long running command completes while the terminal is in the background, I love it).
Ah, thanks for that, I didn't even know rg had types (I thought -t accepted the actual extensions). I'm not saying your tool is worse than ag, just that it doesn't make sense to switch if you're not having problems with ag.
I wanted to try fish too, but too many plugins or libs has a warning on github "does not work with fish" so I just saved myself some headaches and decided to resume with using already great zsh.
Fish user here! FZF works beautifully with fish, no plugin manager needed. `brew install fzf` gives you the option to install scripts for fish if it's your shell (IIRC).
I love the combination of these! Really opens up a world of possibilities. The one command I'm still trying to replace is `cd` itself. For instance, can anyone suggest a way to add bookmarks, so that I can move around faster? I found a few, but was never happy with them.
When tasks like navigating into a project, starting tests, local server and neovim become repetitive I usually end up making a tmux script which does everything for me.
Autojump is the answer here. Totally a gamechanger. If you like its semantics enough, check out fasd [1] , which is a superset of autojump that applies its cache in many other places. Absolutely awesome.
Scratched that itch of mine for bash/zsh in 30 lines[0]. kd stands for quicKDir or worKDir depending on the moon.
kd foobar ~/Workspace/foobar # define bookmark
cd ~/some/where
kd foobar # goes to bookmark
kd foo # matches on string prefix, last entry wins
cd ~/Workspace/quuuuuux
kd qux "$PWD" # quick bookmark current dir
touch Gemfile # define project root
cd app/controllers/name/space/whatevs
kd # goes to project root
Turns out autojump doesn't work for me, too many projects in parallel. Since this one is manual, it can be very semantic. Those 30 lines saved me hours on end of tab mashing, especially in Go workspaces.
Lets you change directory with alt+c, although I have tweaked it so you always search from your root folder. Which isn't for everyone. Otherwise fzf alt+c doesn't let you go back up directories which gets frustrating.
There's also `cd foo bar` in zsh, which substitutes foo with bar in the name of $PWD. I rarely used it, and when I do, it's usually for a well known pair of lengthy named dirs, yet it also shaves off a couple of keystrokes pretty much daily for me.
The second post i read today about fzf. And also again i see ripgrep.
I think it is time to make these tools a default in linux distros.
Maybe a small you could use ripgrep instead of grep, just before the first use of these tools would be interesting.
Work on adding ripgrep to Linux distros is being tracked here[1]. We've made good progress so far, but AFAIK it's still missing in Ubuntu and Debian. I'm not caught up with what's required to get ripgrep into those repos.
With respect to making it a literal default---as in replacing GNU grep---I don't really expect that to ever happen. There is a ton of intersection between the tools, right down to the names and functionality of flags, but there's also many subtle details in the differences. For example, normal grep invocations will use BREs by default, which have different escaping rules than EREs, where EREs are closer to what ripgrep uses. There's also the difference where ripgrep respects things like .gitignore and ignores hidden files by default, which means there's likely a non-zero number of shell scripts out there where swapping grep for ripgrep will break. Folks won't (and shouldn't) take too kindly to that. :-)
To a first approximation, ripgrep is optimized for end user experience in a terminal. This leads to different design decisions. Offering a compatibility mode with grep has been suggested, but is significant work.
The most effective way into “official” Ubuntu is probably via Debian, although there's nothing stopping you from providing your own Ubuntu PPA.
If you want to get a ripgrep package into Debian then you’ll need to do the work to turn the sources into something that Debian can build automatically & find yourself a Debian developer who’ll act as a sponsor for your package and upload it to the Debian archive.
The Debian Mentors mailing list is probably a good place to start, although you could make a sponsor request directly via the bug tracking system if you wanted to:
> Work on adding ripgrep to Linux distros is being tracked here[1]
There are multiple interpretations of the GP's comment, each one being a prerequisite of the next:
- ripgrep is available in the distro repos
- ripgrep is included on the main install medium (first Debian CD, Arch net iso even?)
- ripgrep is selected for inclusion on a default install (but grep is still there)
- ripgrep replaces grep altogether
On first read I though we were talking about the third one.
> where swapping grep for ripgrep will break
> Offering a compatibility mode with grep has been suggested, but is significant work.
Do you mean by that, that 'rg' could change its defaults and behave like 'grep' when being invoked as 'grep' (through symlink or hardlink), similarly to bash/sh or vi/vim?
I agree with the multiple possible interpretations. I conservatively chose the most controversial one and responded to that, which should cover all of them. :-)
Have you set up a Hackernews/Reddit crawler that pings you each time someone mentions "ripgrep"? Seriously, I'd be interested in knowing what solution you use.
What's really good about cscope is this:
- multiple search types such as: where is this symbol assigned to, what functions call this function, where is this defined, where is this referenced, and so on
- curses and CLI interface
- the curses interface is very nice
- the CLI interface is very useful for integration into your $EDITOR, whatever it might be
The only downside is that cscope only supports C-like languages and a few others like yacc. So this works for C, C++, and Java (to a lesser extent), but does not work at all for languages like, say, Python.