---
date: 2008-06-24T00:00:00Z
summary: In which I share my settings for ack.
title: Ack
---

> Ack is designed as a replacement for 99% of the uses of grep.

[Ack](https://metacpan.org/module/App::Ack) is a really nice tool for searching your source code. It's faster than grep because he already knows what you want : searching your sources files :)

By default it will not search in SCM files (.git, .svn, ...), backups files (source.pl~, source.pl.bak, ...). You can specify what kind of files you want (`--perl`, `--cc`, ...), make it match some regex with `--match`, ...

And you can set some defaults configuration in a .ackrc file ! Mine looks like this:

```sh
--sort-files
--color
--context=1
--follow
```

Check also: [vim with ack integration](http://use.perl.org/use.perl.org/_Ovid/journal/36430.html).

Oh, and it's the only program with `--thpppt` option!