If you're grepping binary files, then even with grep, you need to pass the `-a/-...

zeotroph · on Oct 9, 2017

I actually forgot why exactly I switch from rg to grep for binary files, but after some tests I found the use case grep can but ripgrep can NOT do:

  $ grep FOO *
  Binary file libBar.so matches
  foo.txt:file with FOO in it

rg/rg -u/rg -uu/ ignore libBar.so completely, whereas rg -uuu spits out binary garbage.

Here grep's default behavior is what I expected: I want to know which binary files contain some symbol, details are less important (yes, I could use objdump or smarter tools, but grep is good enough 99% of the cases).

rg -u should list the matching binary file, maybe rg -uu should walk a few (printable!) chars to the left and right of the binary match and -uuu should just assume it is text, i.e. the user is right and the auto-guess wrong.

burntsushi · on Oct 9, 2017

That's an interesting use case. You could use the `-l` flag to only list file names that match in combination with `-a` I suppose. That wouldn't let you see the non-binary matched lines though.

In any case, I filed an issue[1]. I think the UX is pretty tricky to get right though.

[1] - https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep/issues/631