I recently started using ack inside of vim (set grepprg=ack) which is
a huge improvement in functionality over the standard :grep and a huge
speed boost over :vimgrep when working over a nfs mount.

However, I quickly became annoyed at the lack of column number
information, which prevents vim from jumping to the actual matched
text.

So, to remedy the situation, I patched Ack.pm to support a new
--column option and to print the column number along with the line
number like so:

$ ack -H --text --column line somefile.txt
somefile.txt
1:6:some line matched
2:12:some other line matched

The change is pretty simple, but I'm new to ack and I'm not sure of
the full implications of this change.  Hopefully this, or a similar
patch can be included to improve support for vim (and probably other
text editors as well).

NOTE: the patch is against version 1.86
--
eric

[ Ack.pm.diff 1K ]
*** Ack.pm.orig 2008-10-23 18:44:57.000000000 -0700
--- Ack.pm      2008-10-23 20:29:20.000000000 -0700
***************
*** 216,221 ****
--- 216,222 ----
          'u|unrestricted'        => \$opt{u},
          'v|invert-match'        => \$opt{v},
          'w|word-regexp'         => \$opt{w},
+         'column'                => \$opt{column},

          'ignore-dirs=s'         => sub { shift; my $dir = remove_dir_sep( shift ); $ignore_dirs{$dir} = '--ignore-dirs' },
          'noignore-dirs=s'       => sub { shift; my $dir = remove_dir_sep( shift ); delete $ignore_dirs{$dir} },
***************
*** 1146,1151 ****
--- 1147,1153 ----
      my $color = $opt->{color};
      my $heading = $opt->{heading};
      my $show_filename = $opt->{show_filename};
+     my $show_column = $opt->{column};

      if ( $show_filename ) {
          if ( not defined $display_filename ) {
***************
*** 1175,1180 ****
--- 1177,1185 ----
          if ( $show_filename ) {
              App::Ack::print_filename($display_filename, $sep) if not $heading;
              App::Ack::print_line_no($line_no, $sep);
+             if ( $show_column && $is_match && $regex && $_ =~ /$regex/g ) {
+               App::Ack::print_line_no($-[0] + 1, $sep);
+             }
          }

          if ( $output_func ) {

  http://use.perl.org/~Ovid/journal/36430

As a quick hack, I jump to the matched text with:

  execute "/\\v"  . pattern

If you use simple Perl regular expressions, this will allow vim to
usually jump directly to the first match it finds (see "help \v" in
vim).

Cheers,
Ovid

While this may satisfy your workflow quite well, my primary usage
takes heavy advantage of vim's quickfix support where I want to be
able to navigate around all matches.  The patch I submitted makes such
usage much more pleasant as it allows :cnext, :cprev, etc. to place
the cursor directly on the match.

Hopefully the powers that be will consider the patch for mainline
integration.

--
eric

On Oct 29, 2008, at 9:39 AM, Eric Van Dewoestine wrote:

--
Andy Lester => a...@petdance.com => www.petdance.com => AIM:petdance

[1] http://groups.google.com/group/ack-users/browse_thread/thread/562cb32...
[2] http://ack-users.googlegroups.com/attach/d876aa71645f7fbf/Ack.pm.diff...

--
eric