---
obj: application
repo: https://github.com/phiresky/ripgrep-all
rev: 2024-02-27
---

# ripgrep-all
rga is a line-oriented search tool that allows you to look for a [regex](../../tools/Regex.md) in a multitude of file types. rga wraps the awesome [ripgrep](ripgrep.md) and enables it to search in [pdf](../../files/PDF.md), docx, [sqlite](../../dev/programming/SQLite.md), jpg, movie subtitles ([mkv](../../files/media/Matroska.md), mp4), etc.

## USAGE:

> rga \[RGA OPTIONS\] \[RG OPTIONS\] PATTERN \[PATH \...\]

## FLAGS:

| Option                    | Description                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             |
| ------------------------- |   |
| --rga-accurate            | Use more accurate but slower matching by [mime](../../files/MIME.md) type<br>By default, rga will match files using file extensions. Some programs,<br>such as sqlite3, don't care about the file extension at all, so users<br>sometimes use any or no extension at all. With this flag, rga will try<br>to detect the [mime](../../files/MIME.md) type of input files using the magic bytes (similar<br>to the [`file`](system/file.md) utility), and use that to choose the adapter. Detection is<br>only done on the first 8KiB of the file, since we can't always seek on the input (in archives). |
| --rga-no-cache            | Disable caching of results<br>By default, rga caches the extracted text, if it is small enough, to a<br>database in ${XDG_CACHE_DIR-~/.cache}/ripgrep-all on Linux,<br>~Library/Caches/ripgrep-all on macOS, or C:\\Users\\username\\AppData\\Local\\ripgrep-all on Windows. This way,<br>repeated searches on the same set of files will be much faster. If you<br>pass this flag, all caching will be disabled.                                                                                                                                                                                       |
| --rga-list-adapters       | List all known adapters                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 |
| --rga-print-config-schema | Print the [JSON Schema](../../tools/JSON%20Schema.md) of the configuration file                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         |
| --rg-help                 | Show help for [ripgrep](ripgrep.md) itself                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              |
| --rg-version              | Show version of [ripgrep](ripgrep.md) itself                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            |
| -V, --version             | Prints version information                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              |

## OPTIONS:

| Option                                                | Description                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               |
| ----------------------------------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| --rga-adapters=\<adapters\>...                        | Change which adapters to use and in which priority order (descending)<br>"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=\<compression-level\>   | [ZSTD compression](../../files/Zstd%20Compression.md) level to apply to adapter outputs before storing in<br>cache db<br>Ranges from 1 - 22 \[default: 12\]                                                                                               |
| --rga-config-file=\<config-file-path\>                |                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           |
| --rga-max-archive-recursion=\<max-archive-recursion\> | Maximum nestedness of archives to recurse into \[default: 5\]                                                                                                                                                                                             |
| --rga-cache-max-blob-len=\<max-blob-len\>             | Max compressed size to cache<br>Longest byte length (after compression) to store in cache. Longer<br>adapter outputs will not be cached and recomputed every time.<br>Allowed suffixes on command line: k M G \[default: 2000000\]                        |
| --rga-cache-path=\<path\>                             | Path to store cache db \[default: /home/user/.cache/ripgrep-all\]                                                                                                                                                                                         |
| -h                                                    | Shows a concise overview                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  |
| --help                                                | Shows more detail and advanced options                                                                                                                                                                                                                    |


## Available Adapters
rga works with _adapters_ that adapt various [file formats](../../files/MIME.md). It comes with a few adapters integrated:

```
rga --rga-list-adapters
```

Adapters:
- **pandoc**
  Uses pandoc to convert binary/unreadable text documents to plain [markdown](../../files/Markdown.md)-like text
  Runs: pandoc --from= --to=plain --wrap=none --markdown-headings=atx  
   Extensions: .epub, .odt, .docx, .fb2, .ipynb, .html, .htm

- **poppler**
  Uses pdftotext (from poppler-utils) to extract plain text from [PDF](../../files/PDF.md) files
  Runs: pdftotext - -  
   Extensions: .pdf  
   Mime Types: application/pdf

- **postprocpagebreaks**
  Adds the page number to each line for an input file that specifies page breaks as ascii page break character.
  Mainly to be used internally by the poppler adapter.  
   Extensions: .asciipagebreaks

- **ffmpeg**
  Uses [ffmpeg](../media/ffmpeg.md) to extract video metadata/chapters, subtitles, lyrics, and other metadata  
   Extensions: .mkv, .mp4, .avi, .mp3, .ogg, .flac, .webm

- **zip**
  Reads a [zip](../../files/ZIP.md) file as a stream and recurses down into its contents  
   Extensions: .zip, .jar  
   Mime Types: application/zip

- **decompress**
  Reads compressed file as a stream and runs a different extractor on the contents.  
   Extensions: .als, .bz2, .gz, .tbz, .tbz2, .tgz, .xz, .zst  
   Mime Types: application/gzip, application/x-bzip, application/x-xz, application/zstd

- **tar**
  Reads a [tar](compression/tar.md) file as a stream and recurses down into its contents  
   Extensions: .tar

- **sqlite**
  Uses [sqlite](../../dev/programming/SQLite.md) bindings to convert [sqlite](../../dev/programming/SQLite.md) 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=+foo,bar':

- **mail**
  Reads mailbox/mail files and runs extractors on the contents and attachments.  
   Extensions: .mbox, .mbx, .eml  
   Mime Types: application/mbox, message/rfc822

## Configuration
In addition to the command-line flags, you can configure rga via the config file. The config file is located in `~/.config/ripgrep-all/config.jsonc` or your OS-equivalent. The file is in the json-with-comments format.

### Custom adapters
Since version 1.0, you can specify custom adapters that invoke external preprocessing scripts in the config file.

See [Community Adapters](https://github.com/phiresky/ripgrep-all/discussions/categories/show-your-adapter) for a list of adapters that other people are using.

For example, the integrated PDF-to-text adapter would look like the following in the config file:
```json
"custom_adapters": [
  {
    "name": "poppler",
    "version": 1,
    "description": "Uses pdftotext (from poppler-utils) to extract plain text from PDF files",

    "extensions": ["pdf"],
    "mimetypes": ["application/pdf"],

    "binary": "pdftotext",
    "args": ["-", "-"],
    "disabled_by_default": false,
    "match_only_by_mime": false,
    "output_path_hint": "${input_virtual_path}.txt.asciipagebreaks"
  }
]
```
