It would be nice if helm-ag used the same convention of other helm commands of showing command-specific help when pressing C-c ?. I am not really sure what would be involved in getting this to work for helm-ag.

Thanks for sharing this awesome addition to Helm. I really appreciate it.

However, I have a question. In Vim, you type :Ag example. Then you see the lines which contains the word 'example' in Quickfix window. Then with Quickfix Reflector, you change the values of each line, and save it back to multiple files. The Emacs-wgrep seems using the same technique as Quickfix Reflector.
An example in Vim:

I haven't figured out how to the same with Helm Ag. Could this even be possible?

At least I can not get it working, and from reading the source it does not seem it is used at all.

This would work similar to the C-x C-s binding for helm-do-grep.

How to reproduce:

• Search with helm-do-ag.
• C-c C-e.
• C-x k to kill it.
• Now search and C-c C-e again.
• M-g n or M-g p no longer works but shows the above error.

Hi, This might be related to #78.

When searching with helm-do-ag a in the search term causes a lot of results shown that seem unrelated.

I'm using spacemacs so this might be an issue there but I did not find any configuration in spacemacs that would obviously cause this.

Example:
I search the spacemacs source tree for smooth scrolling. Everything works fine when typing smooth showing me 23 results. But as soon as I type smooth scroll I get around 5000 results.

I know ag could use .agignore to ignore some pattern specified in the .agignore file.

I can use it in Projectile-ag, but helm-ag seems doesn't support it?

Am I miss something here?

thanks.

Persistent action after going up a directory by 'C-l' invokes an error "Wrong type argument". Please take a look at the screenshot below.

Is it possible for this to work with tramp, similar to helm-grep?

When I press RET on a match on *hgrep* buffer, it kills all other windows and only 1 remains. This is undesirable.

I'd like to use ex: --ignore-case options in helm-do-ag.
Is it intentional to not use helm-ag--base-command in helm-ag--do-ag-candidate-process ?

As the title suggests, it would be handy to have this one.

See title :-)

There are several ag command line options that I frequently toggle on or off. For example:

-G, --file-search-regex PATTERN:
     Only search filenames matching PATTERN.
-s --case-sensitive:
     Match case sensitively.
-w --word-regexp:
     Only match whole words.

Currently the easiest way I've found to set these is to do M-x customize-option helm-ag-command-option, edit the customization buffer, save, return to other buffer, etc.

But that is very tedious to set and unset these variables all the time.

Could there be an easier way? For me, the best would be for helm-do-ag to prompt for command options every time. And I could just press Return to accept the last used setting.

With C/C++/etc., source and header files are often kept in separate directories. It would be phenomenal if, like helm-find-file, C-l was bound to repeat the search in the parent directory.

Hi,

first of all thanks for providing this plug-in! Unfortunately, I'm encountering problems when trying to use helm-do-ag-project-root: it doesn't show anything even thoug helm-do-ag does work for the same inputs.

I'm using Emacs 24.4.1 on Windows 8.1 Pro x64 with the latest ag.exe installed by chocolatey. Anything I can do to help debug? (I'm totally new to Emacs btw... ;-)

Thanks and best regards!

Do you think it is possible to support grep in helm-ag ?

Right now in spacemacs with use helm-ag for ag, pt and ack, we even use it instead of helm-projectile, this is great because we can enjoy the C-c C-e feature of helm-ag. Thanks to helm-ag we can unify search in files, in opened buffers, in current file and in current project.

The only thing we don't support with helm-ag is grep, it would be wonderful to be able to have this backend supported.

I want to see last search results sometimes, but cannot find any command doing this.

I use Projectile and having helm-ag honour the project directory for its search would be nice and useful for people.

Locally, I have adapted helm-ag accordingly by introducing a new function that is called when default-directory was previously used (see here) which checks if Projectile is active and what the current root is and otherwise returns default-directory. Which is basically for what I wanted to open a PR but after thinking about it more, I think this would be the wrong direction as it would naturally somewhat require adding more and more project tools if people ask for it... and besides, not everyone uses Projectile and the like but implements their own solution (kinda what I do too).

So, I am thinking giving the user a simple way to configure this programmatically would be the right thing to do, like:

• introducing a helm-ag-start-search-directory variable which is buffer local and wrapping the directory-default (here) within a or together with it which preserves the current behaviour but introduces a nice configuration point

or

• letting the user register a custom function that is called if defined which is expected to return the path (which is kinda what I already did but here without a default implementation that checks for Projectile or whatever)

Personally, I would go with KISS and YAGNI and choose the former-- at least until something more complex is really required.

What do you think? (and sorry for the wall of text :P)

I get some strange behaviour on helm-do-ag. A picture is worth one thousand words.

I recently unified the usage of ag, pt and ack under helm-ag in order to get the helm-ag-edit capability.
This does not seems to work on a windows box. I tracked the issue a bit and was able to take the output of helm-ag--construct-command verbatim and execute it on a cmd box and it works.

Do you have any insight about this issue, is it an output encoding issue ?

Hi,

I think it would be nice to have the files matched through helm-do-ag to have their paths relative to the search path provided.

For example, here I have emacs-helm-ag/test/test-util.el open, but I specify the search to be up one directory (in emacs-helm-ag/)

When the results come up, the paths are relative to the currently open file, as opposed to the search path specified in the screenshot above

I think it would be nice to show README.md instead of ../README.md

Hi, really enjoying helm-do-ag. I have a couple feature requests of things I find in helm-do-grep that I don't find in helm-do-ag:

1. When performing a recursive search, typing C-u M-x helm-do-grep launches a helm buffer to select the directory, whereas C-u M-x helm-do-ag brings up the default emacs directory selection. I would like to have helm-do-ag bring up a helm buffer to select the directory.

2. C-u M-x helm-do-grep asks for a filename extension filter whereas C-u M-x helm-do-ag doesn't ask for a filename extension filter.
   

How to reproduce:

• Search with helm-do-ag
• C-c C-e to enter edit buffer.
• Switch to some other buffer.
• Now you cannot switch back or you cannot create another *helm-ag-edit* when pressing C-c C-e. It simply returns an error: Text is read-only.

Most of the time, I don't want to enter additional arguments ag and just use the default arguments. Having to press enter for every ag search before I can get the result is inconvenient. Most of the time, I just want helm-ag to behave like helm-do-grep: get the result immediately after every character I entered.

If I want Ag: prompt, I should have another command. In sum, we should have two commands, one behaves like current helm-ag, one ignores Ag: input and allow live feedback on every character, similar to the default helm-do-grep bundled with Helm.

Because of this missing feature, I still use helm-do-grep most of the time for small directory.

Hello,

I just like to mention that the documantation on the front page is in some parts outdated.

At least the following option name has change:
from: helm-ag-thing-at-point
into: helm-ag-insert-at-point

Greets,
Matthias

Platinum Searcher is a new text search tool similar to ag, but is a bit faster. Reasons to support it:

• It has a binary distribution for Windows. A single binary file, pt.exe. Making ag works on Windows is more complicated. Currently, my only viable option on Windows is grep.
• Its syntax is similar to ag. In fact, I replace helm-ag--construct-do-ag-command with plain list of pt arguments and it works fine. Note that on Windows, instead of starting with -- for each option, it starts with a slash /. So, you should have (window-system) check to prepare correct option syntax.

An example of plain pt command:

pt --nogroup --nocolor <pattern> <directory>

On Windows:

pt /nogroup /nocolor <pattern> <directory>

You may hesitate because this package is named helm-ag :) . I think it is fine, given that helm-do-grep also has extended support for ack, so helm-ag provides extended support for pt is only beneficial.

Hi there,

I found a bug of 'helm-source-do-ag':
Default var 'helm-ag-default-directory' and var 'helm-ag-last-default-directory' all are nil, helm-ag-find-file-action will set var 'helm-ag-last-default-directory' with nil, then helm action "Open File" can't work, because find-file don't know parent directory of find file.

And 'helm-do-ag' haven't this bug, because 'helm-do-ag' will set 'helm-ag-default-directory' with (or basedir default-directory)

So i have build below patch to fix bug of 'helm-ag-find-file-action' :

114c114,116
<                                 helm-ag-last-default-directory)))

---
>                                 helm-ag-last-default-directory
>                                 default-directory
>                                 )))

Below is new version after patch:

(defun helm-ag-find-file-action (candidate find-func)
  (let* ((elems (split-string candidate ":"))
         (search-this-file (helm-attr 'search-this-file))
         (filename (or search-this-file (cl-first elems)))
         (line (string-to-number (if search-this-file
                                     (cl-first elems)
                                   (cl-second elems))))
         (default-directory (or helm-ag-default-directory
                                helm-ag-last-default-directory
                                default-directory     ; add 'default-directory' to avoid helm-ag-last-default-directory with nil
                                )))
    (setq helm-ag-last-default-directory default-directory)
    (funcall find-func filename)
    (goto-char (point-min))
    (forward-line (1- line))))

Starting with 1529c42 I'm not able to specify a search directory anymore when performing M-x helm-do-ag. It does ask for a directory if I do C-u M-x helm-do-ag though

In my opinion it should still ask for a directory every time (even without C-u). Perhaps it could default to the git root, or the last used directory. Asking for a directory each time is useful for large projects, and also more intuitive for new users.

In helm-do-grep, search results can be saved into hgrep buffer (helm-grep-mode).
In this buffer, a user can edit the search results via wgrep-helm.
I guess helm-ag can also support the same feature.
Moreover, it would be nice if candidates in helm-ag buffer are colored and highlighted, like grep, helm-occur, helm-ack, etc.

When I do M-x helm-ag, and then enter something like "search term" (without the quotes), I get the message "Failed: 'term'". How can I fix this? Is there a correct way to enter spaces in the search term?

steps:
run emacs -Q and eval:

(package-initialize)
(require 'helm)
(require 'helm-ag)

Assume I have the following files:

~/helm-test/a/one.txt
~/helm-test/b/two.txt (contains text "hello")

Using helm-ag, I can:

1. visit ~/helm-test/a/one.txt
2. C-u M-x helm-ag RET ~/helm-test/ RET hello
3. Finds b/two.txt and I can jump to it.

However, using helm-do-ag, this doesn't work.

1. visit ~/helm-test/a/one.txt
2. C-u M-x helm-do-ag RET ~/helm-test RET RET hello
3. It correctly finds the file, but when I go to jump to it, it takes me to the non-existent file at ~/b/two.txt, not ~/helm-test/b/two.txt.

This problem means that the helm search provided from helm-projectile.el never works for me. If I swap helm-do-ag with helm-ag it works fine.

This is the helm-projectile action when C-s is pressed on a project in the projects list (C-c p p). It can be replaced trivially with the an ag version with the following code:

(defun helm-find-files-ag (candidate)
  "Default action to grep files from `helm-find-files'.  Replaces helm-find-files-grep."
  (let ((default-directory candidate))
    (helm-projectile-ag)))
(defalias 'helm-find-files-grep 'helm-find-files-ag)

Hi,

I am using latest helm-ag from MELPA.
When I issue M-x helm-ag and type a pattern, the helm-ag buffer correctly shows the matching results.
However, when I select a candidate with RET the corresponding file is not opened.
It works fine with helm-do-ag.

Hello here. Plugin working perfectly on local host, but still searching on local host even when projcetile root set to remote ssh. How to get it working over ssh?

It seems it actually searches from one level above, and when selecting any file found it fails to load it (probably because of the same dir/path confusion).

Currently, helm-ag searches for everything. It's great if we can ignore unnecessary files/directories.

I know this can't be more trivial but I'm fussy. I am looking for consistency between helm-ag and helm-projectile.

As of now, strings (see title) are not harmonized as in: "the silver searcher" should be title'ized and "the buffer is already killed" should be capitalized. Also, action strings are title'ized ("Open File Other Window" should be "Open file in other window").

I obviously could edit my copy myself, but I prefer it to be done once and for all. I can provide a list of all strings related if necessary, hope someone can find the time to adjust that.

Thanks : j

First, let me thank you for this great package. Love it.

Unfortunately, C-j stopped working with the last update. Any insight what the problem could be?
Thanks for your help!

This is a feature request for spacemacs, we have currently SPC sto search in a directory, SPC p s to search in a project. I would like to add SPC b s to search in all opened buffers.

It would be cool if one could select directories with helm in helm-ag and browse among those directories, I don't know if it's supported by ag, but I think it would be a cool adition

When there is a match in a minified js or css file it ruins helm buffer.
ag itself has an option for this --print-long-lines Print matches on very long lines (Default: >2k characters) but it doesn't accept any parameter.

Hello,

it would be nice to have project support inside helm-ag like it is done in ag.el ( ag-project ).
Directory selection before every search is a little bit cumbersome.

Greets,
Matthias

I've been using this for a while, and while it used to used the working directory of the current file, now it no longer seems to be respecting the directory of the file.

Did something change recently with regard to this setting? Do I need to update a setting somewhere?

It would be great if I could further narrow the initial ag search results in the helm buffer by just typing in a space and strings to match. The idea is that the ag search gets me all options, and then the buffer search lets me narrow things based on the file path, name, and matched line in the file.

Having the first string be the regex for ag, and the subsequent space-separated strings operate on the buffer would make searching and file navigating in large code basis really rapid.

Such a change (or optional behaviour) would make helm-ag behave more like M-x helm-find-file or Projectiles M-x projectile-find-file or M-x helm-M-x.

I originally posed this feature request as a question on the Emacs stackexchange site in relation to Projectile's use of helm-ag: http://emacs.stackexchange.com/questions/7964/helm-projectile-ag-how-can-i-refine-the-grep-results-further

When I browse the package list via list-packages, helm-ag doesn't show up. Other MELPA packages do, however. (My package-archives also includes ELPA, the GNU repo and Marmalade.)

helm-ag shows up when I search for it on the MELPA website, but I thought I would mention it in case something was amiss.

I am trying to search for a string with parentheses in them. Because '(' is a special character in ag's regexes, I have to escape it. However, emacs regexes work the other way round, '(' isn't a correct emacs regex, and thus, helm-ag--do-ag-propertize breaks when using (re-search-forward helm-input bound t) on line 269.

Since converting between emacs and pcre regexes is a huge task, I would propose adding --literal to the standard command line switches for ag.

Some users don't know that this feature exists. I think it should be visible in the action list.

use helm-ag$ -gnvm*.c to search all c file contain nvm, return no output

use helm-ag$ -gnvm to search all file contain nvm, return nil nil nil nil nil nil nil

but these commands work in terminal:
ag -gnvm*c
ag -gnvm

You can only open files in current directory but not deeper directory related to base search dir anymore. It will open a new file instead.