ripgrep 13 is a new major version release of ripgrep that primarily contains bug fixes, some performance improvements and a few minor breaking changes. There is also a fix for a security vulnerability on Windows (CVE-2021-3013).

In case you haven't heard of it before, ripgrep is a line-oriented search tool that recursively searches the current directory for a regex pattern. By default, ripgrep will respect gitignore rules and automatically skip hidden files/directories and binary files.

Some highlights:

A new short flag, -., has been added. It is an alias for the --hidden flag, which instructs ripgrep to search hidden files and directories.

ripgrep is now using a new vectorized implementation of memmem, which accelerates many common searches. If you notice any performance regressions (or major improvements), I'd love to hear about them through an issue report!

Also, for Windows users targeting MSVC, Cargo will now build fully static executables of ripgrep. The release binaries for ripgrep 13 have been compiled using this configuration.

BREAKING CHANGES:

Binary detection output has changed slightly.

In this release, a small tweak has been made to the output format when a binary file is detected. Previously, it looked like this:

Binary file FOO matches (found "\0" byte around offset XXX)

Now it looks like this:

FOO: binary file matches (found "\0" byte around offset XXX)

vimgrep output in multi-line now only prints the first line for each match.

See issue 1866 for more discussion on this. Previously, every line in a match was duplicated, even when it spanned multiple lines. There are no changes to vimgrep output when multi-line mode is disabled.

In multi-line mode, --count is now equivalent to --count-matches.

This appears to match how pcre2grep implements --count. Previously, ripgrep would produce outright incorrect counts. Another alternative would be to simply count the number of lines---even if it's more than the number of matches---but that seems highly unintuitive.

FULL LIST OF FIXES AND IMPROVEMENTS:

Security fixes:

• CVE-2021-3013: Fixes a security hole on Windows where running ripgrep with either the -z/--search-zip or --pre flags can result in running arbitrary executables from the current directory.
• VULN #1773: This is the public facing issue tracking CVE-2021-3013. ripgrep's README now contains a section describing how to report a vulnerability.

Performance improvements:

• PERF #1657: Check if a file should be ignored first before issuing stat calls.
• PERF memchr#82: ripgrep now uses a new vectorized implementation of memmem.

Feature enhancements:

• Added or improved file type filtering for ASP, Bazel, dvc, FlatBuffers, Futhark, minified files, Mint, pofiles (from GNU gettext) Racket, Red, Ruby, VCL, Yang.
• FEATURE #1404: ripgrep now prints a warning if nothing is searched.
• FEATURE #1613: Cargo will now produce static executables on Windows when using MSVC.
• FEATURE #1680: Add -. as a short flag alias for --hidden.
• FEATURE #1842: Add --field-{context,match}-separator for customizing field delimiters.
• FEATURE #1856: The README now links to a Spanish translation.

Bug fixes:

• BUG #1277: Document cygwin path translation behavior in the FAQ.
• BUG #1739: Fix bug where replacements were buggy if the regex matched a line terminator.
• BUG #1311: Fix multi-line bug where a search & replace for \n didn't work as expected.
• BUG #1401: Fix buggy interaction between PCRE2 look-around and -o/--only-matching.
• BUG #1412: Fix multi-line bug with searches using look-around past matching lines.
• BUG #1577: Fish shell completions will continue to be auto-generated.
• BUG #1642: Fixes a bug where using -m and -A printed more matches than the limit.
• BUG #1703: Clarify the function of -u/--unrestricted.
• BUG #1708: Clarify how -S/--smart-case works.
• BUG #1730: Clarify that CLI invocation must always be valid, regardless of config file.
• BUG #1741: Fix stdin detection when using PowerShell in UNIX environments.
• BUG #1756: Fix bug where foo/** would match foo, but it shouldn't.
• BUG #1765: Fix panic when --crlf is used in some cases.
• BUG #1638: Correctly sniff UTF-8 and do transcoding, like we do for UTF-16.
• BUG #1816: Add documentation for glob alternate syntax, e.g., {a,b,..}.
• BUG #1847: Clarify how the --hidden flag works.
• BUG #1866: Fix bug when computing column numbers in --vimgrep mode.
• BUG #1868: Fix bug where --passthru and -A/-B/-C did not override each other.
• BUG #1869: Clarify docs for --files-with-matches and --files-without-match.
• BUG #1878: Fix bug where \A could produce unanchored matches in multiline search.
• BUG 94e4b8e3: Fix column numbers with --vimgrep is used with -U/--multiline.