Extending Vim with ripgrep

In this post I want to talk about how I use ripgrep in Vim.

This is a crucial part of my daily workflow. It’s fast because of ripgrep and extensible because of how nicely vim is integrated with the command line.

Here’s the configuration needed:

if executable("rg")
  set grepprg=rg\ --vimgrep\ --smart-case\ --hidden
  set grepformat=%f:%l:%c:%m
endif

At first, it was not obvious to me how I could use it beyond :grep foo, so I want to share how I do.

Common use cases

• Search for foo in current working directory: :grep foo.
• Search for foo in files under src/: :grep foo src.
• Search for foo in current file directory: :grep foo %:h¹.
• Search for foo in current file directory’s parent directory: :grep foo %:h:h (and so on).

Less common use cases

• Search for the exact word foo (not foobar): :grep -w foo (equivalent to :grep '\bfoo\b').
• Search for foo in JavaScript files: :grep foo -t js
• Search for foo in files matching a glob: :grep foo -g '*.js'

Extensibility

This is nice but here is where it truly shines. I can give any command line output as an argument.

Say I want to search in files modified between git revisions:

:grep foo `git diff --name-only master..`

Or only modified files:

:grep foo `git ls-files --modified`

I don’t use this everyday but I enjoy it when I do.

Usage with Vim

This will populate the quickfix list with the search results, so I can navigate them with commands I’m already familiar with.

For example, to replace foo with bar across files (asking me to confirm before): :cdo s/foo/bar/gc. And then :cfdo update. Sometimes I narrow the search down with :Cfilter too.

Downsides

A downside is that you can’t use backreferences or look-around in regex. In the rare case I need them, I use :vimgrep. I just find out, thanks to ripgrep’s author, that you can use backreferences/look-around in regex with the -P/--pcre2 flag or --engine auto and I can’t wait to use it!!

Another one is that it’s synchronous, so if the directory is huge it may block vim for a few seconds. But I don’t usually experience this because of how fast ripgrep is.

Conclusion

This might be one of the few sane reasons why I insist on using nvim for development (vim-fugitive and LSP as well). It’s just one of those things I enjoy using and makes development more fun (to me).