ack is not doing a recursive grep

Question

ack (the grep tool written in Perl) does not find a file that grep -r finds, and I cannot find the right options to get it to work. The following shows ack did not find the target string, which is in a regular file in a sub-directory. It's on Bash shell (Ubuntu 11.04):

100 $ grep -r imbue *
    hel/find:              the  fact that some shells including Bash imbue braces
    ## Note: grep find it as shown in the above.

101 $ ./ack-standalone   imbue  
    ## Note: ack didn't find it as shown in the above.

102 $ ./ack-standalone   --version
    ack 1.96
    Running under Perl 5.10.1 at /usr/bin/perl

    Copyright 2005-2011 Andy Lester.

    This program is free software.  You may modify or distribute it
    under the terms of the Artistic License v2.0.

    ## This is the testing folder structure:
103 $ tree
    .
        ack-standalone
        hel
          |-  dot
          |-  find
          |-  grep
          |-  jobs
        perlman
        perlre
        perlrequick
        perlrun
        perlvar
        xargs

    1 directory, 11 files

Version 2 of ack, from apt-get package installation, got same results. In the stand-alone version (version 1) shown above. ack -f shows nothing, and I tried the -r and * options, all with the same results.

On another machine, Ubuntu 10.04, it works like a charm.

Pluton

Answer 1

It works for me if I select to operate in all files regardless of its type, using -a switch (my version is same that yours):

ack -a imbue *

Cretinism

Ack 1.x only searches files of types it understands. Basically, ack only searches source code in files that it recognizes as source code based on the extension. It is NOT a general purpose grep replacement. Also, in the ack -a imbue * example there, the * should not be included. You never want to specify a filename to ack unless you have a reason to specify a filename to ack. – Unclassified

'It is not a general purpose grep replacement.' The first line of ack man page states: "Ack is designed as a replacement for 99% of the uses of grep." – Basilica