Ripgrep: Feature request: add a command-line option to force case-sensitive search

[jeberger]

Rationale: I would prefer smart case to be the default. I can get that by creating an alias like alias rg="rg -S" but then I need some way to force case-sensitive search when I need it e.g. rg --case-sensitive, which given the alias would become rg -S --case-sensitive, the last given flag would then override previous flags.

[BurntSushi]

Should it also override the -i flag?

On Sep 28, 2016 3:30 AM, "jeberger" [email protected] wrote:

Rationale: I would prefer smart case to be the default. I can get that by
creating an alias like alias rg="rg -S" but then I need some way to force
case-sensitive search when I need it e.g. rg --case-sensitive, which
given the alias would become rg -S --case-sensitive, the last given flag
would then override previous flags.

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[kaushalmodi]

Should it also override the -i flag?

Is it possible to have the last flag win? The idea is to allow a user to override whatever is in the alias.

• rg -S --case-sensitive ≈ rg --case-sensitive
• rg --case-sensitive -S ≈ rg -S
• rg -S -i ≈ rg -i
• rg -i --case-sensitive ≈ rg --case-sensitive
• and so on.. (you get the idea :))

[BurntSushi]

Sadly, no, although I agree that might be more intuitive. We'd probably have to switch arg parsing libraries. Docopt doesn't expose that kind of information.

[lespea]

Just a thought... most of the time this won't happen so if you detect both flags as being set you could just loop through argv and manually take the last one? Not very clean but it would work without requiring a new library.

[BurntSushi]

Yeah, I don't really want to add that implementation complexity. We should either do it right (switch to a different arg parsing library, which I don't really want to do) or just specify a precedence.

Let's punt on "last flag wins for now" and decide on precedence. I feel like the precedence should be:

• --case-sensitive
• --case-insensitive
• --smart-case

where flags earlier in the list override flags later in the list.

[kaushalmodi]

That precedence will work for my use case too where I have --smart-case in the alias.

On a different note. Would you also please add -s as an alias to --case-sensitive?

Update:

_because I like tables :)_

--case-sensitive > --case-insensitive (-i) > --smart-case (-S)

|---------------------+--------------------+---------------------|
| Alias               | Extra arg to alias | Effective           |
|---------------------+--------------------+---------------------|
| rg -S               | --case-sensitive   | rg --case-sensitive |
| rg -S               | -i                 | rg -i               |
| rg -i               | --case-sensitive   | rg --case-senstive  |
| rg -i               | -S                 | rg -i               |
| rg --case-sensitive | -i                 | rg --case-sensitive |
| rg --case-sensitive | -S                 | rg --case-sensitive |
|---------------------+--------------------+---------------------|

[jeberger]

Since we can't have "last flag wins", that precedence would be fine. And +1 for the short alias for --case-sensitive.

[BurntSushi]

This is done and will be in the next release. I implemented the precedence rules discussed here and made -s alias --case-sensitive.

[gomesalexandre]

Thank you! Made case-insensitive my default :Rg binding, this is really helpful when having to case-sensitive search ❤️