The Silver Searcher

I’m a search don’t sort kind of guy, so when I was trying to make sense of gigabytes of XML files I instinctively reached for ack. Unfortunately ack struggled with this unholy corpus of legacy drivel. Overhearing my dismay a coworker asked "why aren't you using Silver Searcher?"

It turns out that The Silver Search made light work the XML files, so I looked at how to plug it into Vim. The command-line parameters are compatible with Ack, so all I had to do was change the ackprg:

let g:ackprg = 'ag --nogroup --nocolor --column'

If you want to use the same plugin as me, it’s mileszs / ack.vim.

The Silver Searcher’s documentation claims it’s 3–5 times faster than Ack, and in practice I’ve found this to be true. It’s visibly faster on the projects I’m currently working on, so I’m happy with it after a few weeks of use.