ripgrep

Judgement

What it is

Developer tool

What it does

Recursively searches directories for a regex pattern, skipping gitignored, hidden and binary files by default.

Adopt it when

You search codebases from the terminal or an editor and want a faster grep that respects .gitignore on Windows, macOS and Linux.

Watch out

Its regex syntax differs slightly from GNU grep, and the automatic filtering can hide files you expected to search.

Ready for

Production-ready

Runs as

Command line

Built with

Rust

How established

Established: started 10 years ago, latest release 15.2.0.

What the license allows

You can take the code into anything, including a product you sell, with no conditions.

Judged on 2026-11-06 from the project's README and GitHub data. The license and age lines are worked out directly.

Built from

Follow it down: ripgrep → Rust → runs on a microchip

How compilers were built, back to punched paper tape

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