# rga: ripgrep, but also search in PDFs, E-Books, Office documents, zip, tar.gz, etc.
rga is a line-oriented search tool that allows you to look for a regex in a multitude of file types. rga wraps the awesome [ripgrep] and enables it to search in pdf, docx, sqlite, jpg, movie subtitles (mkv, mp4), etc.
[](https://github.com/phiresky/ripgrep-all)
[](https://crates.io/crates/ripgrep-all)
[](https://www.reddit.com/r/rustjerk/top/?sort=top& t=all)
For more detail, see this introductory blogpost: https://phiresky.github.io/blog/2019/rga--ripgrep-for-zip-targz-docx-odt-epub-jpg/
rga will recursively descend into archives and match text in every file type it knows.
Here is an [example directory ](https://github.com/phiresky/ripgrep-all/tree/master/exampledir/demo ) with different file types:
```
demo/
├── greeting.mkv
├── hello.odt
├── hello.sqlite3
└── somearchive.zip
├── dir
│ ├── greeting.docx
│ └── inner.tar.gz
│ └── greeting.pdf
└── greeting.epub
```
## INSTALLATION
Linux x64, macOS and Windows binaries are available [in GitHub Releases][latestrelease].
[latestrelease]: https://github.com/phiresky/ripgrep-all/releases/latest
### Linux
On Arch Linux, you can simply install from AUR: `yay -S ripgrep-all` .
On Debian-based distributions you can download the [rga binary][latestrelease] and get the dependencies like this:
`apt install ripgrep pandoc poppler-utils ffmpeg cargo`
If ripgrep is not included in your package sources, get it from [here ](https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep/releases ).
rga will search for all binaries it calls in \$PATH and the directory itself is in.
### Windows
Install ripgrep-all via [Chocolatey ](https://chocolatey.org/packages/ripgrep-all ):
```
choco install ripgrep-all
```
If you get an error like `VCRUNTIME140.DLL could not be found` , you need to install [vc_redist.x64.exe ](https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/2977003/the-latest-supported-visual-c-downloads ).
### Homebrew/Linuxbrew
`rga` can be installed with [Homebrew ](https://formulae.brew.sh/formula/ripgrep-all#default ):
`brew install rga`
To install the dependencies that are each not strictly necessary but very useful:
`brew install pandoc poppler tesseract ffmpeg`
### Compile from source
rga should compile with stable Rust (v1.36.0+, check with `rustc --version` ). To build it, run the following (or the equivalent in your OS):
```
~$ apt install build-essential pandoc poppler-utils ffmpeg ripgrep cargo
~$ cargo install ripgrep_all
~$ rga --version # this should work now
```
## Available Adapters
```
rga --rga-list-adapters
```
Adapters:
Adapters:
- **ffmpeg**
Uses ffmpeg to extract video metadata/chapters and subtitles
Extensions: .mkv, .mp4, .avi
* **pandoc**
Uses pandoc to convert binary/unreadable text documents to plain markdown-like text
Extensions: .epub, .odt, .docx, .fb2, .ipynb
- **poppler**
Uses pdftotext (from poppler-utils) to extract plain text from PDF files
Extensions: .pdf
* **zip**
Reads a zip file as a stream and recurses down into its contents
Extensions: .zip
Mime Types: application/zip
* **decompress**
Reads compressed file as a stream and runs a different extractor on the contents.
Extensions: .tgz, .tbz, .tbz2, .gz, .bz2, .xz, .zst
Mime Types: application/gzip, application/x-bzip, application/x-xz, application/zstd
* **tar**
Reads a tar file as a stream and recurses down into its contents
Extensions: .tar
- **sqlite**
Uses sqlite bindings to convert sqlite databases into a simple plain text format
Extensions: .db, .db3, .sqlite, .sqlite3
Mime Types: application/x-sqlite3
The following adapters are disabled by default, and can be enabled using '--rga-adapters=+pdfpages,tesseract':
- **pdfpages**
Converts a pdf to it's individual pages as png files. Only useful in combination with tesseract
Extensions: .pdf
* **tesseract**
Uses tesseract to run OCR on images to make them searchable. May need -j1 to prevent overloading the system. Make sure you have tesseract installed.
Extensions: .jpg, .png
## USAGE
> rga \[FLAGS\] \[OPTIONS\] PATTERN \[PATH ...\]
## FLAGS
**\--rga-accurate**
> Use more accurate but slower matching by mime type
>
> By default, rga will match files using file extensions. Some programs,
> such as sqlite3, don\'t care about the file extension at all, so users
> sometimes use any or no extension at all. With this flag, rga will try
> to detect the mime type of input files using the magic bytes (similar
> to the \`file\` utility), and use that to choose the adapter.
> Detection is only done on the first 8KiB of the file, since we can\'t
> always seek on the input (in archives).
**-h**, ** \--help**
> Prints help information
**\--rga-list-adapters**
> List all known adapters
**\--rga-no-cache**
> Disable caching of results
>
> By default, rga caches the extracted text, if it is small enough,
> to a database in `~/Library/Caches/rga` on macOS,
> `~/.cache/rga` (on other Unixes),
> or `C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\rga` (on Windows).
> This way, repeated searches on
> the same set of files will be much faster. If you pass this flag, all
> caching will be disabled.
**\--rg-help**
> Show help for ripgrep itself
**\--rg-version**
> Show version of ripgrep itself
**-V**, ** \--version**
> Prints version information
## OPTIONS:
**\--rga-adapters=**\<adapters\>\...
> Change which adapters to use and in which priority order (descending)
>
> \"foo,bar\" means use only adapters foo and bar. \"-bar,baz\" means
> use all default adapters except for bar and baz. \"+bar,baz\" means
> use all default adapters and also bar and baz.
**\--rga-cache-compression-level=**\<cache-compression-level\>
> \[default: 12\]
**\--rga-cache-max-blob-len**=\<cache-max-blob-len\>
> Max compressed size to cache
>
> Longest byte length (after compression) to store in cache. Longer
> adapter outputs will not be cached and recomputed every time.
> \[default: 2000000\]
**\--rga-max-archive-recursion=**\<max-archive-recursion\>
> Maximum nestedness of archives to recurse into \[default: 4\]
**-h** shows a concise overview, ** \--help** shows more detail and
advanced options.
All other options not shown here are passed directly to rg, especially
\[PATTERN\] and \[PATH \...\]
[ripgrep]: https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep
## Development
To enable debug logging:
```bash
export RUST_LOG=debug
export RUST_BACKTRACE=1
```
Also remember to disable caching with `--rga-no-cache` or clear the cache
(`~/Library/Caches/rga` on macOS, `~/.cache/rga` on other Unixes,
or `C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\rga` on Windows)
to debug the adapters.
