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by pmarreck 1586 days ago
isn't ripgrep (rg) better than ag, performance-wise?
2 comments

it is, but a) they don't care if it succeeds or not, b) there's a new faster grep-alike every couple of years, and c) there are diminishing returns from these performance enhancements. so if you're enjoying ag, more power to you.

btw my own "idc if it succeeds or not" is forkfreshness.com, a system to surface active downstream forks of otherwise dormant projects. if you've got a project you want to use, but it seems like abandonware, you can find out if other forks are keeping it alive.

oh this is brilliant, I've often had to really dig into github to find out this information!
thanks!
I haven't benchmarked it, but it could probably just be a drop-in replacement as I believe the arguments are compatible. Would be interesting to try!
Likely. The dude who developed ripgrep spent like 2 man-years on it full-time, apparently. Interesting (long, detailed) blog post about it: https://blog.burntsushi.net/ripgrep/
I don't think it took that much time. If you count the time involved in the regex engine though, you might get a bit closer. :-)
LOL. I thought I read that somewhere in your blog post about it (which was amazingly detailed and interesting), but human minds are poo. Thanks so much for this sweet tool! Is there a ripgrep lib that other software can build on this, btw?
Technically yes, and this is the best I can offer: https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep/issues/1009

In practice, there's no real high level documentation. And there is still a considerable amount of "glue" code in ripgrep's main executable. So the library layer exists at a lower level of abstraction, which may or may not be okay for your use case.

Thanks for all your hardwork! I've been dabbling in Rust and doing toy projects, but have years of experience in other languages. Are there any rust projects you recommend contributing to that have a good community?
Rust itself for sure. And rust-analyzer. I'm sure there are more. :-)