Ack

From wikinotes

A grep alternative with some more convenient hotkeys.

Usage

ack  <searchword>
ack --ignore-dir <directory> <searchword>

Ack can also store default arguments in .ackrc files. The default userfile is stored in the user's home, but every time that ack is run, it searches backwards from the current directory for any directory containing a .ackrc and applies any flags contained within it to the provided ack command.

Configuration

You can save ack commandline-flags in a .ackrc file. This can be saved within a directory, and it will be applicable to all subdirectories. This project-specific ackrc can be omitted with the commandline argument --noenv.

# example .ackrc file
--ignore-dir=site-packages/
--ignore-dir=tests/
--ignore-file=is:ctags   # exact filename match 'tags'