How to un-ignore to search all files?

[genivia-inc]

This was asked as issue #342 and might be useful to replicate here for others with the same question.

Question

Coming from ripgrep, I'm wondering if there is a way to quickly reset the "ignore" rules with a command flag? (same as ripgrep's -u flag, for example).

I'm using a couple of "ignore-files" rules in my .ugrep config, which are helpful to exclude non-interesting things in a project. Occasionally though I want to search for all files and drop any previous ignore rules, but still preserve my other options in .ugrep.

ripgrep offers the "-u/--unignore" flag, which when used once resets the ignore list, repeated also searches for hidden files, exactly for this sort of usage scenario.

Is there something similar in ugrep?

Answer

Use option -@ (--all) to cancel all previous restrictions on files and directories to search. Cancels --ignore-file, --ignore-binary and all other inclusion/exclusion constraints. Except that hidden files and directories are still ignored by default, unless option -. (--hidden) is specified also to search hidden files and directories.

File and directory restrictions specified after option -@ are enforced. For example:

• ug -@. searches all files and directories, including hidden
• ug -@I searches all files and directories except hidden files and directories, ignoring binary files with option -I (--ignore-binary)
• ug -@ -t text searches all text and markdown files, even those that are ignored in .gitignore

[genivia-inc]

Note: see answer in the question post.