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hgrep is a grep tool to search files with a given pattern and print the matched code snippets with human-friendly syntaxhighlighting. This tool brings search results like the code search on GitHub to your local machine. In short, it's something likesearching files withripgrep and showing results withbat.

This is similar to-C option ofgrep command. hgrep is useful to survey the matches with contexts around them. When somematches are near enough, hgrep prints the lines within one code snippet. Unlikegrep -C, hgrep adopts some heuristics aroundblank lines to determine an efficient number of context lines.

Example:

# Use built-in subset of ripgrep (optional)hgrep pattern ./dir# Read results of grep command via stdingrep -nH pattern -R ./dir| hgreprg -nH pattern ./dir| hgrep

hgrep provides two printers to print match results for your use case. Please see'bat printer v.s.syntect printer'section for the comparison.

• syntect printer (default): Our own implementation of printer usingsyntect library. Performance, output layout, and colorthemes are more optimized
• bat printer: Printer built on top ofbat's pretty printer implementation, which is battle-tested and provides some uniquefeatures

Please seethe usage section for more details.

Visitthe releases page and download the zip file for your platform. Unarchive the file and put the executable filein some$PATH directory. Currently, the following targets are supported. If you want a binary for some other platform, feel freeto make an issue to request it.

• Linux (x86_64-gnu, x86_64-musl, aarch64-gnu)
• macOS (x86_64, aarch64)
• Windows (x86_64-msvc)

By adding hgrep repository as Homebrew tap,hgrep command can be installed and managed via Homebrew.The formulasupports x86_64/aarch64 macOS and x86_64 Linux.

brew tap"rhysd/hgrep""https://github.com/rhysd/hgrep"brew install hgrep

Note: If you installed Homebrew to a non-default location (e.g.~/homebrew), you might see some errors. In the case, please tryto installhgrep viacargo instead. See#6 for more details.

On macOS, you can installhgrep with the following commands through MacPorts:

sudo port selfupdatesudo port install hgrep

To install pre-built binaries using the package manager, simply run:

pkgin install hgrep

Or, if you prefer to build from source,

cd /usr/pkgsrc/textproc/hgrepmake install

Visitthe releases page and download.deb package file. It can be installed viadpkg command:

sudo dpkg -i hgrep_v0.3.6-1_amd64.deb

The manual (forman command) and Bash completion is automatically installed. If you're using some other shell, setup the shellcompletion by yourself. See'Generate completion scripts' section for more details.

cargo install hgrep

Sincecargo buildshgrep command from sources, you can choose your favorite features and drop others by feature flags. Forexample, if you always usehgrep with readinggrep output from stdin and don't usebat printer, only enablingsyntect-printerdramatically reduces the number of dependencies, installation time, and binary size.

cargo install hgrep --no-default-features --features syntect-printer

All features are optional and enabled by default. At leastbat-printer orsyntect-printer needs to be enabled.

For the differences ofbat-printer andsyntect-printer, see'bat printer v.s.syntect printer' section.

Optionally hgrep provides built-in grep implementation thanks toripgrep as a library. It is a subset ofrg command.

Built-in ripgrep is a recommended way to use hgrep because it is optimized for the use case.

When a pattern is given,hgrep command search files in given paths with it. When a directory is included in paths, hgrepsearches it recursively. When no path is given, hgrep searches the current directory.

hgrep [options...] pattern [paths...]

By default, hgrep shows at least 3 lines and at most 6 lines as context of a match. How many context lines is determined by someheuristics around blank lines for space efficiency. Minimum context lines can be specified by-c and maximum context lines canbe specified by-C. If you don't want the heuristics, give the same value to the options like-c 6 -C 6.

# At least 10 context lines and at most 20 context lineshgrep -c 10 -C 20 pattern paths...

Like ripgrep, the built-in grep filters files by default. It looks at ignore files such as.gitignore and ignores hidden files.To disable the filters,--no-ignore and--hidden are available respectively.-u is a useful shortcut for them.

# Same as `hgrep --no-ignore pattern paths...`hgrep -u pattern paths...# Same as `hgrep --no-ignore --hidden pattern paths...`hgrep -uu pattern paths...

Regarding to the performance compared to receiveing inputs fromgrep orrg via pipe, it's fast to handle so many matches inthe same process. In combination withsyntect-printer feature, matched regions can be highlighted in a searched text color.The built-in grep feature is enabled by default and can be omitted by feature flags.

Though almost all useful options are implemented, the built-in grep implementation is a subset of ripgrep. If you need fullfunctionalities, userg command and eat its output by hgrep via stdin. Currently there are the following restrictions.

• Preprocessor is not supported (e.g. search zip files)
• Pattern file (-f or--file ofrg) is not supported
• Sorting results (--sort and--sortr) is not supported because it significantly slows down printing the search output
• Memory map is not used until--mmap flag is specified
• Adding and removing file types are not supported. Only default file types are supported (see--type-list)
• .ripgreprc config file is not supported
• Searching binary files (--binary) is not supported

When no pattern and paths are given in command line arguments, hgrep can take grep results via stdin. Since hgrep expects filepaths and line numbers in each line of the output,-nH is necessary atgrep command.

grep -nH pattern -R paths...| hgrep [options...]

grep alternative tools likeripgrep,ag,pt, ... are also available because they can output results compatible withgrep -nH.

rg -nH pattern paths...| hgrep [options...]

hgrep provides two printers to print match results;bat printer andsyntect printer.bat printer is a printerimplementation built on top ofbat's pretty printer. Andsyntect printer is our own printer implementation built withsyntect library.--printer (or-p) flag can specify the printer to print results.

At first, there wasbat printer only. And thensyntect printer was implemented for better performance and optimized layout.

• syntect printer
  • Performance is much better. 2x to 4x faster (more match results get better performance).
  • Output layout is optimized for our use cases. Matched regions are highlighted in a searched text color. A line number at amatch is highlighted in a different color.
  • Painting background color (--background) is supported. This is useful when your favorite theme does not fit to yourterminal's background color.
  • Themes are optimized for showing matched results. And some new themes likeayu orpredawn are available. See theoutput of--list-themes to know the list of all themes.
  • Compatibility for old terminals is better. It automatically changes the default theme to 'ansi' for 16-colors terminals. Andit provides--ascii-lines flag to draw border lines with ascii characters instead of Unicode characters like '├', '┬', andso on.
• bat printer
  • Implementation is battle-tested. It is already used by many users on many platforms and terminals.
  • The behavior is compatible withbat command. Its output layout is the same asbat command respectingBAT_THEME andBAT_STYLE environment variables. It can load bat's custom assets cache.

syntect is the default printer.

ayu-dark	ayu-mirage	ayu-light

Cyanide	predawn	Material

(and more...)

Syntax highlighting is very CPU-heavy task. Many regular expression matchings happen at each line. For accurate syntaxhighlighting, a highlighter needs to parse the syntax from the beginning of file. It means that printing a match at the lastline of a file is a much heavier task than printing a match at the first line of the file.

Sincesyntect printer is designed for calculating syntax highlights per file in parallel, its performance is much better. It's2x~4x faster thanbat printer in some experiments. More match results get better performance.

In contrast, bat is not designed for multi-threads. It's not possible to sharebat::PrettyPrinter instance across threads. Itmeans that printing match results including syntax highlighting must be done in a single thread.

syntect printer sequence	bat printer sequence

When you want a pager to see the output interactively, please pipe the output to external commands likeless.$COLUMNS needsto be passed to--term-width option because the terminal width is fixed to 80 characters when stdout is not connected to TTY.If you frequently use a pager, it is a good option to define a wrapper shell function like below:

functionhgrep() {command hgrep --term-width"$COLUMNS""$@"| less -R}

The default color theme isMonokai Extended respectingbat command's default. Other theme can be specified via--themeoption. To know names of themes, try--list-themes flag.

hgrep --theme Nord ...

The default layout is 'grid'. To reduce borderlines to use space more efficiently,--no-grid option is available.

hgrep --no-grid ...

When you usebat printer, hgrep respectsBAT_THEME andBAT_STYLE environment variable. Theme set toBAT_THEMEis used by default. And the grid layout is used whenplain orheader ornumbers is set toBAT_STYLE.syntectprinter does not look at these variables. To set default theme, please use a command alias in your shell (See'Set default command options' for details).

export BAT_THEME=OneHalfDarkexport BAT_STYLE=numbershgrep -p bat ...

Whensyntect printer is used, painting background colors is supported with--background flag.

hgrep --background ...

HGREP_DEFAULT_OPTS environment variable is available. Options set to the variable are prepended to the command line argumentswhen you runhgrep command.

Here are some examples:

# Set the `ayu-dark` color theme with background colorsexport HGREP_DEFAULT_OPTS='--theme ayu-dark --background'# Same as `hgrep --theme ayu-dark --background pattern paths`hgrep pattern paths...# Disable automatic filteringexport HGREP_DEFAULT_OPTS='--no-ignore --hidden'# Use 'bat' printer by defaultexport HGREP_DEFAULT_OPTS='--printer bat'

The command line arguments in the environment variable are parsed withshlex. Use quotes for including spaces in some commandline option arguments. For example:

$Env:HGREP_DEFAULT_OPTS="--glob '!C:\Program Files'"

• Common options
  • --min-context NUM (-c): Minimum lines of leading and trailing context surrounding each match. Default value is 3
  • --max-context NUM (-C): Maximum lines of leading and trailing context surrounding each match. Default value is 6
  • --no-grid (-G): Remove borderlines for more compact output. --grid flag is an opposite of this flag
  • --tab NUM: Number of spaces for tab character. Set 0 to pass tabs through. Default value is 4
  • --theme THEME: Theme for syntax highlighting. Default value is the same asbat command
  • --list-themes: List all available theme names and their samples for --theme option
  • --printer: Printer to print the match results. 'bat' or 'syntect' is available. Default value is 'bat'
  • --term-width NUM: Width (number of characters) of terminal window
  • --wrap MODE: Text-wrapping mode. 'char' enables character-wise text-wrapping. 'never' disables text-wrapping. Default value is 'char'
  • --first-only (-f): Show only the first code snippet per file
  • --encoding (-E): Specify the text encoding that hgrep will use on all files printed like 'sjis'
• Only forripgrep feature
  • --no-ignore: Don't respect ignore files (.gitignore, .ignore, etc.)
  • --ignore-case (-i): When this flag is provided, the given pattern will be searched case insensitively
  • --smart-case (-S): Search case insensitively if the pattern is all lowercase. Search case sensitively otherwise
  • --hidden (-.): Search hidden files and directories. By default, hidden files and directories are skipped
  • --unrestricted (-u): Reduce the level of "smart" filtering by repeated uses (up to 2). A single flag-u is equivalent to --no-ignore.Two flags-uu are equivalent to --no-ignore --hidden. Unlike ripgrep, three flags-uuu are not supported since hgrep doesn't support--binary flag
  • --glob GLOB... (-g): Include or exclude files and directories for searching that match the given glob
  • --glob-case-insensitive: Process glob patterns given with the -g/--glob flag case insensitively
  • --fixed-strings (-F): Treat the pattern as a literal string instead of a regular expression
  • --word-regexp (-w): Only show matches surrounded by word boundaries
  • --follow (-L): When this flag is enabled, hgrep will follow symbolic links while traversing directories
  • --multiline (-U): Enable matching across multiple lines
  • --multiline-dotall: Enable "dot all" in your regex pattern, which causes '.' to match newlines when multiline searching is enabled
  • --crlf: When enabled, hgrep will treat CRLF (\r\n) as a line terminator instead of just\n. This flag is useful on Windows
  • --mmap: Search using memory maps when possible. mmap is disabled by default unlike hgrep
  • --max-count NUM (-m): Limit the number of matching lines per file searched to NUM
  • --max-depth NUM: Limit the depth of directory traversal to NUM levels beyond the paths given
  • --max-filesize NUM+SUFFIX?: Ignore files larger than NUM in size. This does not apply to directories.The input format accepts suffixes of K, M or G
  • --line-regexp (-x): Only show matches surrounded by line boundaries. This is equivalent to putting^...$ around the search pattern
  • --invert-match (-v): Invert matching. Show lines that do not match the given pattern
  • --pcre2 (-P): When this flag is present, hgrep will use the PCRE2 regex engine instead of its default regex engine
  • --type TYPE (-t): Only search files matching TYPE. This option is repeatable
  • --type-not TYPE (-T): Do not search files matching TYPE. Inverse of --type. This option is repeatable
  • --type-list: Show all supported file types and their corresponding globs
  • --one-file-system: When enabled, the search will not cross file system boundaries relative to where it started from
  • --no-unicode: Disable unicode-aware regular expression matching
  • --regex-size-limit NUM+SUFFIX?: The upper size limit of the compiled regex. The default limit is 10M. For the size suffixes, see --max-filesize
  • --dfa-size-limit NUM+SUFFIX?: The upper size limit of the regex DFA. The default limit is 10M. For the size suffixes, see --max-filesize
• Only forsyntect-printer feature
  • --background: Paint background colors. This is useful when your favorite theme does not fit to your terminal's background color
  • --ascii-lines: Use ASCII characters for drawing border lines instead of Unicode characters
• Only forbat-printer feature
  • --custom-assets: Load bat's custom assets from cache. Note that this flag may not work with some version ofbat command

See--help for the full list of available options in your environment.

hgrep supports various encodings thanks toencoding_rs crate.

--encoding (-E) command line option can specify the file encoding explicitly. For example, the following command will assumematched files are encoded with Shift JIS.

hgrep --encoding sjis pattern

In addition, hgrep tries to detect file encodings fromBOM. UTF-16LE, UTF-16BE, and UTF-8 can be detected automatically.

When no file encoding is detected from BOM, hgrep assumes files are encoded in UTF-8 as default encoding. If malformed UTF-8sequences are contained, they are replaced with the replacement characterU+FFFD.

Shell completion script forhgrep command is available.--generate-completion-script option generates completion script andprints it to stdout.Bash,Zsh,Fish,PowerShell,Elvish,Nushell aresupported. See--help for more details.

Here is an example of setup the completion script on Zsh.

# Let's say we set comps=~/.zsh/site-functionshgrep --generate-completion-script zsh>~/.zsh/site-functions/_hgrepchmod +x~/.zsh/site-functions/_hgrep

Manual page forhgrep command is available.--generate-man-page flag generates the man page and prints it to stdout.

This is an example to generate man page in/usr/local/share.

hgrep --generate-man-page> /usr/local/share/man/man1/hgrep.1# See the manual pageman hgrep

hgrep command returns the exit status as follows.

hgrep automatically detects 24-bit or 256 or 16 colors support of your terminal application by the following logic.

At first, hgrep checksCOLORTERM environment variable. Whentruecolor or24bit is set to the variable, 24-bitcolors are enabled.

On Linux or macOS or FreeBSD or NetBSD, hgrep tries to detect your terminal's color support fromterminfo.

On Windows, hgrep enables 24-bit colors if the Windows version is 10.0.15063 or later becuaseOS version 10.0.15063 (Windows 10 1703) started to support 24-bit colors. Otherwise it enables only 16-colors.

WhenCOLORTERM is not set, hgrep checksTERM environment variable which the terminal name is set.

• When it ends with-truecolor or-24bit, 24-bit colors are enabled.
• When it ends with-256color or-square, 256 colors are enabled.

When no color support was detected fromCOLORTERM norTERM, htrep eventually falls back to 256 colors, which are most widelysupported by popular terminals.

At this point the major version is fixed to 0. The minor version is bumped when some breaking changes are added. The patchversion is bumped when some new compatible changes are added and/or some bug fixes are added.

Some other alternatives instead of using hgrep.

ripgrep and bat are well-designed tools so they can be used as building parts of a small script.

rg -nH ...|while IFS=read -r line;do# Parse $line and calculate the range of snippet and highlighted lines  file=...  lines=...  range=...# Show matched snippet  bat -H${lines} -r${range}${file}done

It works fine but hgrep is more optimized for this usage.

• When the matches are near enough, the lines are printed in one snippet.
• Performance is much better than runningbat process per matched line.
• hgrep computes efficient context lines based on some heuristics.
• hgrep is available where ShellScript is unavailable (e.g. PowerShell).

Fuzzy finder likefzf provides a preview window functionality andbat can print the match in the preview window.

grep -nH ...| \    fzf --preview='bat --pager never --color always -H {2} -r {2}: -p {1}' --delimiter=:

This usage is great when you need the incremental search, but you need to check each preview of matches one by one.

hgrep focuses on surveying all the matches.

Pleasecreate an issue on GitHub. Ensure to describe how to reproduce the bug.

hgrep is distributed underthe MIT license.