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jqueryvimack

How do I get Ack to ignore jQuery files?

I'm using Vim + Ack.Vim and am flummoxed on how to ignore hits within Jquery files. I've got an .ackrc file defined (see below), but I'm stabbing in the dark.

--type-add=ruby=.haml,.rake,.rsel,.builder
--type-add=html=.html.erb,.html.haml
--type-add=js=.js.erb
--type-add=css=.sass
--type-set=cucumber=.feature
--type-add=jquery=jquery*.js
--ignore-dir=vendor
--ignore-dir=log
--ignore-dir=tmp
--ignore-dir=doc
--ignore-dir=coverage
--sort-files
--color
--follow
--group
--nojquery

How would seasoned ack + ack.vim users solve this issue?

Solution

  • Interesting problem! I can think of a few approaches:

    1. patch ack to allow filtering with filename patterns (best: ack needs this feature)
    2. modify ack.vim to ignore certain filename patterns (not sure how you'd do this)
    3. filter output of ack, with a wrapper script/program (brittle/annoying to munge ack's output)
    4. filter input filelist given to ack, with a wrapper script/program (doable)
    5. patch ack to ignore jQuery files (kludgy, but works)

    I got the last one working. Ack is written in Perl, so it's pretty easy to read and modify. Look for Ack.pm on your system. I use Ubuntu 11.10 and installed ack-grep to get ack; my Ack.pm is found at /usr/share/perl5/App/Ack.pm. If you installed the stand-alone version of ack, the file you'll edit is just called "ack". Look for the subroutine is_searchable(). Here's what I see:

    sub is_searchable {
    my $filename = shift;

    # If these are updated, update the --help message
    return if $filename =~ /[.]bak$/;
    return if $filename =~ /~$/;
    return if $filename =~ m{^#.*#$}o;
    return if $filename =~ m{^core\.\d+$}o;
    return if $filename =~ m{[._].*\.swp$}o;

    return 1;
}

    Add another line right after above return 1;:

        return if $filename =~ /^jquery/;

    Again, going back to my first suggestion (patch ack to allow filtering with filename patterns) Andy might take a patch for this.

    By the way, you probably already figured this out, but your use of --type-add doesn't appear to be valid syntax for the ack command line:

    --type-add=jquery=jquery*.js

    it just expects file extensions. Hope this helps!