add -L option (--files-without-match)

[hyperknot]

What version of ripgrep are you using?

0.7.1

What operating system are you using ripgrep on?

macOS 10.13.3

Describe your question, feature request, or bug.

Feature request: add support for -L or --files-without-match.

This happens to be the same switch across grep, ack, and ag.

I didn't find any such function in ripgrep, at least not in the documentation.

[BurntSushi]

It already exists:

$ rg -h | rg files-without-match
        --files-without-match               Only print the paths that contain zero matches.

[hyperknot]

I looked for "not", "don't", "invert" words but I didn't find this one. It's ironic as I got the --files-without-match from grep manual.
So any reason why not to support -L as well?

[BurntSushi]

@hyperknot Because it's already used to tell ripgrep to follow symbolic links, which is consistent with find's flag for the same behavior. This is also documented:

$ rg -h | rg -e -L
    -L, --follow                            Follow symbolic links.

[BurntSushi]

ag uses -L for --files-without-match, and also has a -f/--follow flag, but -f is used in ripgrep (and grep) for searching for many patterns from a file, which is a feature that ag does not have.

[BurntSushi]

grep uses -R for following symbolic links during recursive search, where -r is the normal variant. In hindsight, it is plausible that ripgrep should have used -R as well (although the lowercase -r variant doesn't make sense since that's ripgrep's default behavior), which would have left -L open for --files-without-match. However, that is certainly not happening now.

My feeling is that --files-without-match isn't used too often, and adding a short flag for it other than -L would confuse matters even more. But if someone has a better idea, I'm all ears.

[hyperknot]

I see, I agree there shouldn't be a new short switch then.

[hyperknot]

Maybe just add the words "invert" or "not" or something like this to the help, as the other options use these words for negation.

[BurntSushi]

@hyperknot I can do that. It's in my local changes which should get pushed out soon and will be in the next release.