Silver Searcher - Ack Alternative Code Search Tool

Isaac

2 minutes

silver finder

SilverSearcher it's a pretty good tool for command line code search. It is cross-platform, which is good if you work with several operating systems. It is also open source and totally free. In addition, it shares a multitude of functional attributes with the grep plain text search functions.

The main difference between both tools is that Silver Searcher offers better performance, as well as being able to have a specific algorithm to ignore certain files through patterns. Something that can be positive for programmers or aspiring developers, and even Linux users who spend most of their time working in front of the source code in a text editor.

In case you didn't know, Silver Searcher (ag) is similar to Ack. This program is designed to be a 99% replacement for the grep tool. With it you can search for file names, lines of code, filtering based on patterns, etc. By default, ack prints on the screen the lines that match what the user wanted to search for. This tool, unlike grep, does not come pre-installed in the distros, nor does Silver Searcher, so you will have to install it yourself.

For install this tool, you can do it easily from the repositories of your favorite distro, using the appropriate package manager for your case. For instance:

sudo apt-get install silversearcher-ag       [Debian, Ubuntu, Mint...]
sudo yum install the_silver_searcher         [RHEL/CentOS/Fedora...]
sudo emerge -a sys-apps/the_silver_searcher  [Gentoo Linux]
sudo pacman -S the_silver_searcher           [Arch Linux]
sudo zypper install the_silver_searcher      [OpenSUSE/SUSE]

With these commands you can install it in the main distros, as well as in GNU / Linux distributions derived from them. Once installed, you can easily start using it using the ag command. For more information about its functions, you can run:

man ag

For more information about the project, you can consult your GitHub page. There you will also see examples of use ...


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