[petdance]

I'm glad you appreciate that you can install ack anywhere. It's exactly for that use case that I have kept ack able to be a single text file download. Also, it only requires Perl 5.10.1, so it's OK if you're using an old Perl.

[oxplot]

Hmm — there is a project that allows you to compile a single binary that is cross platform across Linux, Mac and Windows. Wondering if ripgrep can be compiled in such a way and that would make it very close to the portability you have with ack.

[petdance]

That still might run afoul of locked down networks like I've seen at banks. Users couldn't install any binaries at all, but with something like ack it's just cut & paste some text into a text file. ack can literally be a select-all, Ctrl-C, switch windows, "cat > ack", Ctrl-V.