#15 Power Searching with Ack
Most Linux/Unix users are familiar with Grep, but for many situations Ack does a better and faster job.
Ack is smart enough to skip version control files and directories, temp files, can exclude or include certain file types, and use powerful regular expression when searching.
Uploaded on Dec 11, 2009 | 4:25 | Tags: ack grep Linux
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Although ack documentation lists everything I have to say, I find examples easier to digest. I have some examples here at http://github.com/neerajdotname/guides/blob/master/ack_guide.txt
Great screencast! I started using ack a few months ago and have never gone back to using grep -r. I agree with neeraj that some examples, especially of regular expressions, would be a great addition.
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I love ack - this was a good introduction, enough to persuade people to start using it I'm certain. I'm not sure the grep / ack benchmark was completely fair. If you started with grep, and then did ack, ack may have gone significantly faster than otherwise because the file system was already cached by the grep search. (perhaps you'd removed that artifact by pre-caching the folder or something?) Anyways, not contesting that ack is faster :) Great job. Thanks!