sag / sack / srg

s(hortcut)-ag/ack/grep: a faster way to use ag, ack, or grep!

sag / sack / srg / sgrep act as wrappers for ag / ack / rg / grep to provide convenience for the repetitive menial tasks when searching through codebases via the command line.

Note about the Legacy Code

The original sack code comes from https://github.com/sampson-chen/sack

There are a few forks which fix some bugs or add some features. I find this work very interesting and very helpful when I want to look for a pattern throught an amount of source code files. So I decided to extract only this feature. Thus, I dropped:

• the reference to the sackrc configuration file. I prefer the minimalist way: three optional environment variables ;
• the profiles management.

I tried to keep the code as simple as possible.

What is ag?

ag is a faster version of ack!*

*Out of the box, it includes some additional file that ack skips by default in its searches.

To learn more about ag, and how to install it:

https://github.com/ggreer/the_silver_searcher

What is ack?

ack is the replacement for grep!

Here is why you should use ack over grep: http://betterthangrep.com/

(Now that you are sold on ack) To install ack in a one-line script:

curl http://betterthangrep.com/ack-standalone > ~/bin/ack && chmod 0755 !#:3

How to Install:

Open a terminal and run the following:

> git clone https://github.com/garaud/sack.git
> cd sack
> ./install_sack.sh

Copy and make it executable the script sack, sag srg, sgrep and F in ~/bin by default. You can also create symlink instead of copying.

Works fine with gawk. Note that mawk interpreter does not handle the escape sequence correctly (when parsing colored results with a regexp).

How to Use

You can use sag / sack / srg in exactly the same way you currently use ag / ack / rg! Woot!

For why sack is faster (and more fun!) to use, read on about its main / side features...

Main Feature - Shortcuts

sag / sack /srg prefixes shortcut tags to ag / ack / rg's search results:

user@linux:~/src$ sack thumbnail

... (omitted results)
/home/user/src/reviewboard/reviewboard/attachments/mimetypes.py
[13] 6:from djblets.util.templatetags.djblets_images import thumbnail
[14] 120:    def get_thumbnail(self):
[15] 125:        return mark_safe('<pre class="file-thumbnail"></pre>')
[16] 135:    def get_thumbnail(self):
[17] 136:        """Returns a thumbnail of the image."""
[18] 137:        return mark_safe('<img src="%s" class="file-thumbnail" alt="%s" />'
[19] 138:                         % (thumbnail(self.attachment.file, size='1000x1000'),
[20] 146:    def get_thumbnail(self):
[21] 157:        return mark_safe('<pre class="file-thumbnail">%s</pre>'

Now, instead of having to spend time tediously navigating to some deep directory and typing out the file name, simply do:

user@linux:~$ F 21

And sack will open the file associated with that particular search result with your favorite editor (currently supports both vim and emacs).

Of course, you can rename the script filename F if you want to.

The repetitive 10-15 sec chore has now been reduced to only 2 keystrokes (~1 second)!! More importantly, now you won't lose your train of throught from mentally context switching from the task at hand to deal with menial things like typing out a file path. Yay productivity!!

(For why removing such distractions is important to coding "in the zone", see the excellent Joel Test: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000043.html)

Note that whenever you perform a search in any terminal with sack, you can use the shortcuts in all other terminals (including new ones).

So now you can use one terminal to keep the search results open for reference, and use other terminals to open the files with shortcuts!

Screenshot

How to Configure it?

I drop all the reference to the configuration file .sackrc. There are just three (optional) environment variables:

• SACK_SHORTCUT: the path to the file where sack stores lineno: filepath. By default, it's ${XDG_CACHE_DIR}/sack/sack_shortcuts or ~/.cache/sack/sack_shortcuts if XDG_CACHE_DIR is unset. This file is used in both sack and F scripts.
• SACK_EDITOR: editor used to open file with the F script. Use the EDITOR environment variable by default if SACK_EDITOR is not defined.
• SACK_COLORS: special colors parameters

This is an example with Emacs and a colored ag:

export SACK_EDITOR="emacsclient -n"
export SACK_COLORS='--color --color-line-number=1;35;40 --color-path=1;34;40 --color-match=1;4;31;40'

Editors

For now, you can use the script F to open a file at a specific line with:

• Emacs
• Vim
• SublimeText
• VSCode
• Other editors which are be able to open a file with this syntax +lineno filename

Please configure the $SACK_EDITOR if you needed. For instance:

# Emacs
export SACK_EDITOR="emacsclient -n"  # if you use Emacs server. '-n' means "no wait"

# Vim
export SACK_EDITOR="vim"

# SublimeText
export SACK_EDITOR="subl"

# VSCode
export SACK_EDITOR="code"