Fast 'Find in Files' for VIM?

Question

What are some options for getting really fast 'Find in Files' searching in VIM?

Our codebase is large enough that searching needs to work off an index. grep/vimgrep/etc are too slow.

Indexing doesn't need to be particularly fast; I can index overnight.

Thanks,

[EDIT] I'm also working in a Windows environment.

Marshallmarshallese

Answer 1

If it's source code (rather than full text search), then ctags with the TagList plugin should work well for your needs. See, for example:

http://www.thegeekstuff.com/2009/04/ctags-taglist-vi-vim-editor-as-sourece-code-browser/

EDIT: TagList and ctags will work on Windows as well (that's what I use). See the TagList install page and FAQ. The following links might prove useful:

• http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=273
• http://vim-taglist.sourceforge.net/installation.html
• http://vim-taglist.sourceforge.net/faq.html

There's also a TagList forum where you can get further help:

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/taglist/

I set it up on my windows machine a while back, but I don't remember encountering any problems.

Barmy

Answer 2

Something that I use, but not through vim, is ack: http://betterthangrep.com/

It is a perl based tool, and it should be usable in Windows.

Hillary

This works very well for me. We have thousands of files, and a normal grep (or even ack) can take tens of seconds. But something like :Ack --ruby *something* will generally return in a second or two, since it is searching only a subset of files – Titanesque

Answer 3

If you're working with a large codebase, then it might be time to look for a more powerful solution than conventional tools. OpenGrok is a very fast source code search and cross-reference engine. On top of its great performance, it integrates with Subversion, Mercurial, and ClearCase, among other source revision control software. It sounds a lot like something you could use.

If you want support to use OpenGrok from within Vim, you could easily write a vim function that would call system() to start the search for you. To read more about writing new vim commands, look up :help 40.2 within vim.

I hope that's what you were looking for.

Institute

Answer 4

I don't know how I found this, but looks like someone has written a plugin for google desktop

Chromolithograph

Answer 5

Try to install https://github.com/mileszs/ack.vim, http://beyondgrep.com/ ,

then make a link

ln -s /usr/bin/ack-grep /usr/bin/ack 

and add

noremap <C-f> :copen<CR>:Ack -aQi --ignore-dir someignoringdir

to your .vimrc, after you can find in files through Ctrl+F, enjoy

_   /|
\'o.O'
=(___)=
   U  

Gardas

Not sure if this will be faster than builtin grep or vimgrep. – Sullivan

Answer 6

You can try this

:vimgrep /something/ */

and dont forget to open search result window after

:cw

Gardas