ack
A grep-like source code search tool built for programmers working in large code trees.
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2 more ways to get ack
Package managers
- Chocolatey
choco install ack - Homebrew
brew install ack
About ack
ack is a grep-like tool for searching source code. It is designed for programmers with large, mixed trees of source code and is written in portable Perl 5, using Perl's regular expressions.
Version 3.10.0, released in June 2025, added repeatable --and, --or and --not options for combining patterns, clearer error messages for invalid regexes, and a --proximate option that groups matches that sit near each other in a file. The site includes a feature chart comparing it with similar tools.
Strengths
- Built for searching source code rather than general text
- Full Perl regular expressions
- Boolean --and, --or and --not options
Limitations
- Needs a Perl interpreter
- Newer tools such as ripgrep are typically faster on very large trees
Details
- Pricing
- FreeFree and open source.
- License
- Artistic-2.0
- Developer
- Andy Lester
- Platforms
- Windows, macOS, Linux, Command line
- How it runs
- Downloadable app
- Account
- Not required
- Works offline
- Yes
- Best suited for
- Programmers searching large source trees from the terminal
- Categories
- CLI tools, Developer tools
- Last verified
- Added
- Provenance
- Facts checked against the developer's own pages and store listings, 1 sources on file.
Alternatives to ack
Compare allSoftware that can replace ack for an important use case, and what changes if you switch.
ripgrep
Searches a whole directory tree for a pattern in a fraction of the time grep takes, and skips what gitignore says to skip.
ripgrep is a single binary with no Perl interpreter needed, runs faster on large trees and respects gitignore by default, though its regex syntax differs slightly.
ugrep
A grep-compatible file searcher with a text interface, Boolean queries, fuzzy matching and archive search.
ugrep keeps grep-compatible options and adds an interactive text interface, Boolean and fuzzy search, and searching inside archives and compressed files, under a BSD-3-Clause license.
ripgrep-all
ripgrep that can also search inside PDFs, Office documents, ebooks, zip files, databases and subtitles.
ripgrep-all extends ripgrep to search inside PDFs, Office documents and archives, but depends on external tools such as pandoc and poppler and is AGPL-3.0 licensed.
Similar software
Related functionality, not necessarily a direct replacement.
fd
Finds files by name without the argument soup that find requires, and it is much faster.
fastmod
A fast command-line tool for interactive regex search and replace across a large codebase.
sad
A command-line batch search and replace tool that shows a diff before changes are applied.
Serpl
A terminal interface for searching and replacing text across a whole project folder.
fzf
A fuzzy filter for any list: files, command history, processes, branches, anything you can pipe into it.
bat-extras
A set of Bash scripts that connect the bat file viewer with grep, man, diff and less.
