Search hidden files and dirs by default

[ggreer]

Search hidden files and dirs by default

[bronson]

If anyone is coming here looking for the difference between --hidden and -u, this might be what you want:

put /.git/ in your ~/.agignore file.

Now, ag -u will search every file including git directories, and ag --hidden will search hidden files, but still stay out of .git directories and everything mentioned in .gitignore.

This had me stumped to for a good 20 minutes. Thanks for a great utility!

[HelloGrayson]

FWIW, I added this to my profile:

alias ag='ag --hidden'

I couldn't think of a situation when I didn't want to search hidden files (assuming .agignore was respected).

[luochen1990]

@breerly I also think that search hidden files should be the default behavior, if somebody want to change this behavior, he just need to add .* into .agignore

[ggreer]

I don't know about making it the default, but I agree with you. Ag should definitely have this feature. I just merged #25, which allows you to specify searching multiple paths. So you can run ag blah .* . to search all hidden files/directories and the current directory. It's less than ideal, but it works for now.

A command-line option to have this behavior might not be a bad idea.

[stherold]

I put this alias in my .zshrc which is exactly what I want: Searching .env files that are ignored in my .gitignore and exclude uninteresting directories:

alias ag="ag --hidden --skip-vcs-ignores --ignore=\"*Library*\" --ignore=\"*.gem*\" --ignore=\"*.build*\" --ignore=\"*.git*\""

[vaughnkoch]

Yeah, maybe the simplest thing would be a command line switch like you suggested - "search hidden files as well" but should be coupled with what's in .hgignore. Thanks for ag again!

[silverwind]

I don't think dotfiles should be searched by default because of .git but .ignore should have the ability to accept negated pattern like !.* which would essentially act the same as --hidden but in a portable manner which would allow patterns like

/.git/
!.*

Edit: See #168 regarding negated patterns.