Ripgrep: Exclusion globbing (`-g '!expr'`) does not work properly with double quotes

[akien-mga]

After hitting this issue relatively often since I started using ripgrep, I finally understood what the exact issue appears to be.

When trying to exclude a given folder from my search paths with the globbing option -g, it fails if the expression string is enclosed with double quotes ("). It works fine with simple quotes ('):

$ rg -g "!thirdparty" test
bash: !thirdparty: event not found

$ rg -g '!thirdparty' test
servers/visual_server.h:        RID _make_test_cube();
servers/visual_server.h:        RID test_texture;
[...]

I don't know if the issue can be fixed in ripgrep or if it's a limitation of Bash, but I've been using ' and " interchangeably for many years in my shell without notable issues.

Environment:

• Mageia 6 x86_64
• ripgrep 0.7.1 / -AVX -SIMD, built with cargo 0.22.0 and rustc 1.21.0
• bash 4.3.48

Edit: Upgraded ripgrep to 0.7.1, same issue (report was originally about 0.6.0).

[okdana]

That is just the way history expansion works in bash. It's similar to $ in that it expands inside double-quotes but not single-quotes. You have four options:

• Use single-quotes to suppress expansion
• Use a back-slash to escape the ! (\!thirdparty)
• Disable history expansion by running set +H or adding it to your profile
• Change the history-expansion character by setting the histchars variable; for example, histchars='%^#' will change it from ! to %

[akien-mga]

Thanks a lot for the detailed answer! I think I'll start using \! for ripgrep, that's something I should easily remember and avoid bad surprise when I pick the wrong quotes.

Closing as it's not a bug, though it might be worth adding a mention to this in the --help output if other shells work similarly - if it's only bash, it's maybe not worth cluttering the docs.