Ripgrep Cheatsheet

Core Syntax

rg [OPTIONS] PATTERN [PATH]

Essential Flags

Flag	Long Form	Purpose
-i	--ignore-case	Case insensitive
-S	--smart-case	Lowercase = insensitive, uppercase = sensitive
-w	--word-regexp	Match whole words only
-v	--invert-match	Lines that do NOT match
-F	--fixed-strings	Literal string, no regex
-e PAT	--regexp=PAT	Multiple patterns (OR)
-f FILE	--file=FILE	Read patterns from file
-P	--pcre2	Enable PCRE2 (lookaheads)

Scope Control

Flag	Purpose
-t TYPE	Only this file type (rg --type-list)
-T TYPE	Exclude this file type
-g GLOB	Include glob; ! prefix to exclude
-u	Ignore .gitignore
-uu	Also search hidden dotfiles
-uuu	Also search binary files
--hidden	Just hidden files (not -u)
--max-depth N	Limit directory depth

Output Formatting

Flag	Purpose
-n	Line numbers (default)
-N	No line numbers
-l	Only filenames
-c	Count matches per file
-o	Only the matching text
-A N	N lines after match
-B N	N lines before match
-C N	N lines context each side
-q	Quiet (exit code only)
--json	Machine-readable NDJSON
--vimgrep	file:line:col:text format
--no-heading	Traditional grep format
--sort path	Sort results by filename

Quick Pipelines

# Top 10 IPs in Nginx access log
rg -o "^\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}" access.log \
  | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | head -10

# Find and replace across project
rg -l "old_function" src/ | xargs sed -i 's/old_function/new_function/g'

# Files with TODOs, open in vim
rg -l "TODO" | fzf | xargs vim

# Count total errors in all log files
rg -c "ERROR" /var/log/ | awk -F: '{s+=$2} END{print s}'

# Extract all unique exception types from Java logs
rg -o "java\.lang\.\w+Exception" app.log | sort -u

# CI check: block commit if secrets found
rg -q -e "api_key" -e "password" -e "AWS_SECRET" . && echo "BLOCKED" && exit 1

The -u Ladder

Command	Searches
rg "p"	Tracked, visible files
rg -u "p"	+ ignored files (node_modules)
rg -uu "p"	+ hidden dotfiles (.env)
rg -uuu "p"	+ binary files