Ripgrep: Libripgrep return list instead of outputting to terminal or returning JSON

[mrageh]

Thanks for creating ripgrep and extracting libripgrep.

What version of ripgrep are you using?

https://github.com/mrageh/simplegrep

How did you install ripgrep?

I'm using libripgrep

What operating system are you using ripgrep on?

Mac

Question

I'm new to Rust and I'm trying to build a toy project that searches through directories and then instead of outputting the result to the terminal or returning JSON. It gives me back a simple list
that matches my certain criteria, where I can continue modifying it in Rust.

https://github.com/mrageh/simplegrep/blob/master/src/main.rs#L55

The SummaryBuilder returns the exact results I want but then when I call build on it and pass it the cli::stdout it prints to the terminal. Which is expected behavior.
But I'm wondering if I could pass something else to build like a vector and return a populated list from the SummaryBuilder.

[BurntSushi]

@mrageh SummaryBuilder::build requires a WriteColor. You can't pass something else to it. Indeed, the entire point of the grep-printer crate is specifically to craft an output format that is readable by end users in a style they are familiar with. If you want to handle matches as structured data, then the grep-printer crate is the wrong tool for that.

You are on the right track with respect to "giving something else" to build. That is, this is the code you'll want to change: https://github.com/mrageh/simplegrep/blob/223bf40a3507785b90529180d0846367a08cba77/src/main.rs#L71-L75

In particular, that corresponds to Searcher::search_path, which a matcher, a file path to search and something that implements Sink. So all you need to do is create a new type and implement the Sink trait. Then pass a value of that type to search_path and get rid of grep_printer entirely.

Note that there are some pre-built types that implement Sink for you, which you might find convenient instead of defining your own types: https://docs.rs/grep-searcher/0.1.4/grep_searcher/sinks/index.html

There's a short example using the sinks::UTF8 sink here: https://docs.rs/grep-searcher/0.1.4/grep_searcher/index.html#example

[zjhmale]

@BurntSushi your comment here really saved my day!