Could you please provide a test case and describe expected output versus actual output?

#!/bin/sh
git init /tmp/tmprepo
cd /tmp/tmprepo
echo ignoredfile >.gitignore
echo foo >normalfile
echo foo >.hiddenfile
echo foo >ignoredfile

echo 'rg -l:'
rg -l foo

echo 'rg -l -u:'
rg -l -u foo

echo 'rg -l -uu:'
rg -l -uu foo

echo 'rg -l -uuu:'
rg -l -uuu foo

outputs

rg -l:
normalfile
rg -l -u:
ignoredfile
normalfile
rg -l -uu:
ignoredfile
.hiddenfile
normalfile
rg -l -uuu:
ignoredfile
.hiddenfile
normalfile

so, as far as I can see, there is no way to have normalfile and .hiddenfile but not ignoredfile.

I don't see your expected output anywhere. What do you expect to see?

so, as far as I can see, there is no way to have normalfile and .hiddenfile but not ignoredfile.

I don't understand. Why doesn't rg foo --hidden work for you? It prints .hiddenfile and normalfile for me.

My expected output was some flag that would return .hiddenfile and normalfile, but as you mention, --hidden is indeed the correct flag -- my bad.
I would suggest adding a mention of this option next to -u, especially as -u is listed in the "COMMON OPTIONS" section of the man page but not --hidden.
Feel free to close this.

Docs can definitely be clearer. I'll mark this as a doc bug. Thank you. :-)

Ah, but I noticed that --hidden includes .git in the search:

#!/bin/sh
git init /tmp/tmprepo
cd /tmp/tmprepo
rg --hidden Unnamed

outputs

Initialized empty Git repository in /tmp/tmprepo/.git/
.git/description
1:Unnamed repository; edit this file 'description' to name the repository.

.git/hooks/update.sample
55:"Unnamed repository"* | "")

but the contents of .git should probably be ignored unless some number of -u is passed? (Not sure what makes the most sense here.)

It's working as intended. --hidden removes the hidden filter and therefore
shows the .git directory. If you want to ignore it, then add it to an
.ignore file.

On Jan 24, 2017 2:24 AM, "Antony Lee" notifications@github.com wrote:

Ah, but I noticed that --hidden includes .git in the search:

!/bin/sh

git init /tmp/tmprepo
cd /tmp/tmprepo
rg --hidden Unnamed

outputs

Initialized empty Git repository in /tmp/tmprepo/.git/
.git/description
1:Unnamed repository; edit this file 'description' to name the repository.

.git/hooks/update.sample
55:"Unnamed repository"* | "")

but the contents of .git should probably be ignored unless some number of
-u is passed? (Not sure what makes the most sense here.)

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Obviously rg --hidden can have whatever semantics you decide, but it seems a bit strange that (when in a git repo) it would mean "search all nonbinary files that either are tracked by git (including hidden ones), or are in .git/". It would seem more reasonable to have

no flag: search all nonbinary, nonhidden files that are tracked by git
--hidden: search all nonbinary files that are tracked by git
-u: search all nonbinary, nonhidden files, without caring about git (so including .git/)
-u --hidden: search all nonbinary files, without caring about git (so including .git/)

-uu seems equivalent to -u --hidden, by the way. I don't know how much you care about backcompat, but if you want the flags to be orthogonal to each other perhaps you can remove -uuu and let the new -uu correspond to the old -uuu (as the old -uu is covered by -u --hidden).

it would mean "search all nonbinary files that either are tracked by git (including hidden ones), or are in .git/"

But that's not what it means. --hidden simply means "search hidden files." The --hidden flag is orthogonal to whether a file is tracked by git or not.

-uu seems equivalent to -u --hidden, by the way.

Yes. The -u flags are aliases. -u is --no-ignore, -uu is --no-ignore --hidden and -uuu is --no-ignore --hidden -a.

no flag: search all nonbinary, nonhidden files that are tracked by git

This seems to be the core of your suggestion. Unfortunately, ripgrep doesn't operate based on what's tracked in git, but rather, what's in your gitignore files. Therefore, it is inherently imperfect.

The intended solution here is to either whitelist specific hidden files that you want searched, or to pass --hidden and blacklist files you don't want searched. That's the point of .ignore files: it provides a way to override default behavior if the default behavior is undesirable.

Ah, I see, rg operates in a world where there is no knowledge of git, but there just happens to be already written .ignore files that are called ".gitignore". I guess that's fine (especially as I can .ignore .git/ from my $HOME as you suggest), just a bit... unexpected, at least for me.

I came across this exact issue while trying to come up with a solid set of flags to use with ctrlp in vim. I ended up settling on rg --hidden --glob '!.git' which does what I want and, since it lives in my .vimrc, I don't mind the verbosity. I do think it's surprising to find rg searching through the .git directory but I can also understand the mental model of rg not wanting to be "git aware" or any other VCS for that matter.

@bdarfler rg is git aware though. It knows how to read .gitignore files and implements the rules described in man gitignore, including knowing to read your $HOME/.gitconfig. The problem here is that you're passing the --hidden flag, which says, "search hidden files and directories." That includes .git.

Thanks, I wasn't being as clear as I could have been. I just wanted to point out that this seems to be a common use case and it might be nice to have a flag for it. However, there is an easy enough workaround. Thanks for the awesome tool!

@bdarfler Fair enough. There are two other possibilities. One is to create an alias, e.g., alias rg="rg --hidden -g '!.git'". Another is to encode the rules into an .ignore file. e.g.,

$ cat $HOME/.config/ripgrep/ignore
!.*
.git

and then use rg --ignore-file $HOME/.config/ripgrep/ignore (and perhaps create an alias).

Cool! My primary use case is for ctrlp fuzzy finding in vim so I just tuck the rg --hidden -g '!.git' away in my .vimrc and that is sufficient for me.

Sorry to bring this back up, but just to add that I'm in the ctrlp situation as well and also using @bdarfler's fix (thanks). Maybe this reinforces the idea that expecting --hidden to also ignore .git/ is a very specific use case.

@tombh Right. Especially if this is a config knob inside of some vim plugin somewhere. Having to use --hidden -g'!.git' seems fine in that case.

Let me just add that I had exactly the same expectation as @anntzer: I expected rg to keep ignoring files ignored by Git (and thus not recurse into .git/) when --hidden is used.

That rg --hidden includes files inside .git/ is technically correct since .git/ isn't mentioned in any of my .gitignore files. The reason is of course that Git knows to ignore the directory by default :smiley:

I solved it by creating a ~/.ignore file with the following:

.git/
.hg/
.svn/

That makes --hidden work the way I had expected it to work in the first place.

So, I came up with the following configuration in my .vimrc:

if executable('rg')
  let g:ctrlp_use_caching = 0
  let g:ctrlp_user_command = 'rg --files --no-ignore --ignore-file ~/.config/ripgrep/ignore --hidden %s'
  let g:ackprg = 'rg --vimgrep --no-ignore --ignore-file ~/.config/ripgrep/ignore --hidden'
endif

This allows me to open and search through hidden files, even if they are in .gitignore.

But then I set an ignore file which has **/.git/*, **/.terraform/*, [._]*.sw[a-p] and so on, so that I do not see a .filename.swp in my CtrlP list and ack.vim does not perform search in .terraform directories.

Works like a charm! Thank you, @BurntSushi!