lightgrep 0.1.0

A fast, ergonomic grep-like tool in Rust
Documentation

lightgrep

lightgrep is a fast, ergonomic grep-like CLI tool written in Rust. It searches files using regex or string literals, with optional highlighting, line numbers, and recursive searching.

Features

  • Search files for regular expressions

  • Highlight matches

  • Print line numbers, counts, file paths

  • Invert matches

  • Recursive directory search

  • Multiple pattern support (String literals only)

Install

From crates.io (recommended)
cargo install lightgrep

Build from source

git clone git@github.com:drxnn/lightgrep.git
cd lightgrep
cargo build --release
# binary will be in target/release/lightgrep

Usage

lightgrep [OPTIONS] <PATTERN> -F [FILE...]

Basic examples:

# search for "TODO" in a specific file
lightgrep TODO -F src/test.txt

# search with a regex (escape shell metacharacters)
lightgrep '\bfixme\b' README.md



# Multiple String Literal Patterns found and highlighted

lightgrep -- --multiple red blue green  --highlight --recursive

Options:

Flag Description Maps to
-q, --query <PATTERN> Query string to search for Args.query
--multiple <PATTERN>... Multiple literal string patterns to search for Args.multiple
-i, --ignore-case Case-insensitive search Args.ignore_case
-F, --file-path <FILE_PATH> File or directory to search Args.file_path
--invert Invert match — print non-matching lines Args.invert
-E, --regex Treat QUERY as a regex Args.regex
-c, --count Only print count of matching lines Args.count
-l, --line-number Show line numbers for matches Args.line_number
-r, --recursive Recurse into directories Args.recursive
--ext <EXTENSION> Filter files by extension (e.g., .rs) Args.file_extension
--highlight Highlight matches Args.highlight
--help Show help message —

License

MIT OR Apache-2.0