Mastering Emacs Visual Highlighting to rg (Ripgrep)

Discover how to integrate visual highlighting in Emacs with ripgrep (counsel-rg) to enhance your coding workflow. Follow our easy steps to replicate the Spacemacs functionality.
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This video is based on the question https://stackoverflow.com/q/62277889/ asked by the user 'chris' ( https://stackoverflow.com/u/258537/ ) and on the answer https://stackoverflow.com/a/62503900/ provided by the user 'viam0Zah' ( https://stackoverflow.com/u/73603/ ) at 'Stack Overflow' website. Thanks to these great users and Stackexchange community for their contributions.

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Mastering Emacs Visual Highlighting to rg (Ripgrep): A Step-by-Step Guide

If you're an Emacs user, you might have come across the frustration of wanting to replicate certain features found in Spacemacs, particularly when it comes to searching for highlighted text. Imagine being able to quickly highlight a term you've selected and using that to conduct a broader search across your project. This is precisely the challenge we’re addressing today: how to send a highlighted term to counsel-rg, which is essentially an interface to the ripgrep search tool, after highlighting it in Emacs.

The Problem

In your common coding tasks, you may want to search for specific terms not just within a file but also across multiple files in a convenient manner. If you are using Evil mode in Emacs, you might have a workflow that consists of:

Pressing v in command mode to highlight a term.

Using Shift + 8 to search within the buffer for that term.

Finally, pressing / to search recursively for the term across the current directory (with counsel-rg as the search utility).

While the first two steps have their solutions, the last aspect—sending the selected term to counsel-rg—has posed quite a challenge for many users. But don't worry, we're here to help you with this!

A Simple Solution Using thing-at-point

The great news is that Emacs provides a feature known as thing-at-point, which can retrieve the term you have highlighted. With just a bit of custom code, you can easily automate the search with counsel-rg. Below is how to implement this in your Emacs configuration.

Step 1: Define the Custom Function

You will need to define a custom function in your Emacs configuration file (usually found at .emacs or init.el). This function will utilize thing-at-point to fetch the word you've highlighted and pass it to counsel-rg. Here's the code snippet you need:

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

Step 2: Add a Key Binding (Optional)

To make the execution of this function more convenient, you can assign a key binding. Here’s an example of how you can bind it to a key combination, say "C-c s":

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

Step 3: Reload Your Configuration

After adding the code above, make sure to reload your Emacs configuration or restart Emacs to ensure that the new function and key binding is recognized. You can often do this by evaluating the buffer or running M-x eval-buffer while in the configuration file.

Using the New Function

Once everything is set up:

In command mode, press v to highlight a term.

Simply call your newly created function by using your key binding (e.g., C-c s).

Your highlighted term will now be sent to counsel-rg, enabling you to search across your project efficiently.

Conclusion

By following these steps, you have successfully replicated an essential Spacemacs feature in your Emacs configuration. The integration of visual highlighting with ripgrep searches enhances your coding workflow, facilitating easier navigation and search capabilities. Embrace the power of customization in Emacs and make it work better for you! Happy coding!