On 2010-08-31, Britton Kerin wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I only fairly recently found out about :copen :lopen etc. Some snippets using
> them are popular on vim_use:
>
>
> http://groups.google.com/group/vim_use/browse_thread/thread/211ed834076e7526/9f756b498db39636?lnk=gst&q=Run+lgrep+then+immediately+#9f756b498db39636
>
> At minimum, I think these commands deserve a pointer from the grep section
> of quickfix.txt. It can take years to find them otherwise. I've attached
> a patch which does this and also includes a command example. I think
> its worth including, because for me (and apparently some others at least)
> the default :grep (and :lgrep and :helpgrep) behavior is somewhere between
> painful and unusable. In the past I've usually just ended up using the shell.
>
> Also, :grep! is usually more useful than :grep. Jumping to the first error
> usually makes sense when compiling but usually doesn't when grep'ing. One
> does
> in theory get led to a description of the !-form functionality when reading
> the :grep documentation, so I'm not sure the docs can be regarded as needing
> fixing. But :grep! does make things behave better and odds are many people
> don't find out about it. The attached patch helps with this issue as well.
>
> There are two other problems I have with the way grep works in vim (and most
> other editors for that matter):
>
> * Its not easy to filter the grep results. When a user needs to grep it
> usually means:
>
> a. the project is biggish
>
> b. they have little idea where the occurences they are interested
> in are located, and
>
> c. there are likely multiple file types involved.
>
> This means that much of the output of the grep is going to be
> uninteresting. One can go back and change the file list, but its usually
> a hassle to get the list just right. This is enough of a trouble for
> me that I often end up going to the terminal and tacking on a bunch of
> '| grep -v "junk_pattern"' things until I get what I want.
>
> * Support for context is poor. A single line is often not enough,
> but putting '-C 1' in 'grepprg' makes :cn ~200% slower.
>
> I have a module that fixes these issues for me though its pretty messy
> and fragile as it depends on slicing up, saving, :cgetfile'ing, reparsing,
> and re-presenting the error file.
>
> I just mention them because they are issues I'd love to see vim address
> properly someday.
Just to present the other side of some of your issues:
1. I never use :grep!. When I :grep for something, I want to see
all occurrences of it in the context of the files in which it is
found, so I want to immediately jump to the first match. I
often start :grep as
:new | grep ...
so that the matching files are opened in a new window.
2. I agree that the default commands for traversing the quickfix
list can be painful. I have ^N and ^P mapped to :cn and :cp
respectively so that jumping from one match to the next is a
breeze.
3. If the output of a :grep command contains too many undesired
hits, use a better pattern or use the --include and --exclude
options to grep to limit the files searched. If you find a lot
of hits in one file that you know aren't going to be
interesting, use :cnf to skip that file.
4. A little context for the matches would be nice, but again,
traversing the quickfix list with the ^N and ^P mappings is
fast and provides a full screen of context.
Vim's :grep facility is not perfect, but I don't think it's as bad
as you say, either.
Regards,
Gary
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