Add support for negation of -k --known-types options in ack2

[megahall]

Matthew Hall

I use ack on some big multi-GB repositories which contain a whole ton of ancillary things of dubious utility that I can't necessarily delete or remove or relocate, for example, XML files, script files written in DSLs, JSON files, random test data files, etc. which are technically text, but full of an awful lot of junk I wouldn't want to search by default because it will take lots longer. And they could have a whole lot of arbitrary names and extensions I don't care about because they're not the sort of classic extensions used on code.

Searching all these somewhat defeats the purpose of ack, because I liked the way it tossed out mostly-useless non-code files by default. Of course it's good you have the -k option to bring back the old behavior.

But unfortunately at the same time, -a and -u were ripped out. So then you don't have a nice way of putting -k in .ackrc, and only overriding -k and no other flags (like fully disabling .ackrc would cause) when you really do want to search through all the cruft to ferret out something obscure.

Packy Anderson

Ideally, I'd love to be able to say --noknown-types on the command line and have it override the --known-types in my .ackrc. When ack2 came out, the default switched from the behavior I wanted as a coder (searching only known types) to the behavior all the non-coders looking for a grep replacement were expecting (searching everything). I accepted this as a good thing because it made ack's defaults match what the majority of users were expecting, and the good of the many outweigh the good of the few, even when the few includes me.

This pleased me until I had to look for a file ... I knew ... wouldn't have an extension, so, reflexively, I typed ack -a. Bzzzzt! I typed an ack --bar to make myself feel better and then consulted ack --help. Looking at the options, I decided to try --noknown-types to see if it was an undocumented feature. No dice. Eventually, I had to settle for --noenv and do without my other .ackrc defaults, and I found my file.

I guess what I find confusing is why a Boolean option that's either on or off shouldn't accept the no prefix to negate its meaning. Looking at the code, I see that supporting --noknown-types would be more work because it's not specified as 'k|known-types!' => \$somevar, but it doesn't look like much more. In fact, adding this should fix it:

$additional_specs{'noknown-types'} = sub {
        my ( undef, $value ) = @_;
        $opt->{'filters'} = [ ];
    };

So I'm asking: is there a reason why --known-types, which was added to allow the user to revert to ack 1.x behavior, isn't negatable? I understand ... changing the default behavior, and I understand adding an option to bring the old behavior back, but I don't understand why a user can't override the default in their .ackrc... . They either have to eschew all their custom settings (--noenv) or create a custom .ackrc for what's probably a one-off search.

Setting the default behavior to what most users expect is good, allowing sophisticated users to override those defaults to suit themselves is better, but then allowing power users to override their own defaults on an invocation by invocation basis is BEST (imho).

Andy Lester

So, we need -K/--no-known-types.

Someone make a ticket for it please.

[packy]

Add switch to turn off -k/--known-types on an invocation-by-invocation basis.

Proffered code:

$additional_specs{'K|no-known-types'} = sub {
    my ( undef, $value ) = @_;
    $opt->{'filters'} = [ ];
};

[godlygeek]

I'm in the same boat as Packy Anderson, wanting to only search source files by default, but wanting the ability to search other stuff occasionally. I can accomplish the first part by putting -k in an ackrc, but there's not currently a way to disable just that one option via the command line.

So, I definitely agree that --no-known-types should be supported, but why not make the short name for it -a instead of -K, and bring back --all as an alias for --no-known-types? It seems to me like --all was removed prematurely - even though it's now the default, having an option for it is still useful because it lets you override an ackrc.

[packy]

I've forked and added the feature and created the above pull request. Since there's lots of other things that Andy and Rob are working on, accepting this pull should probably be a low priority for them.

If you need the feature, you can grab my fork at https://github.com/packy/ack2/. I promise to pull changes from this project into my fork so it stays up to date, and the only change I've made is the addition of this option.

[megahall]

Woohoo! This is the one thing making me stick with ack1.96 for the time being.

Because default searching every single file type is incredibly too slow on huge source trees...

On Mon, Apr 14, 2014 at 11:43:15PM -0700, Packy Anderson wrote:

I've forked and added the feature and created the above pull request. Since there's lots of other things that Andy and Rob are working on, accepting this pull should probably be a low priority for them.

If you need the feature, you can grab my fork at https://github.com/packy/ack2/. I promise to pull changes from this project into my fork so it stays up to date, and the only change I've made is the addition of this option.

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#293 (comment)

[petdance]

Thanks for doing this. I'll try to look at it soon, but this week is pretty crazy.

[petdance]

There will probably be no more releases of ack 2. If this is still a relevant idea, please submit it to the ack3 repo.