In simple English
Standard search tools only look inside plain text files. They miss words hidden inside PDF documents, Word files, and zip archives. This tool searches all of those locked file types at once. It uses a fast search engine called ripgrep under the hood. You run it from your terminal just like a normal search command.
What it is
Ripgrep-all is a command-line utility that wraps around popular search and conversion tools to extract text from binary file formats on the fly. It supports PDF files, EPUB books, SQLite databases, video subtitle tracks, and compressed archives.
What it is good for
Solo builders and researchers who need to find specific notes, snippets, or terms scattered across mixed folders of PDFs, EPUBs, and Word documents without opening them individually.
- Searches inside compressed archives and nested folders automatically.
- Caches extracted text on your disk so repeat searches run much faster.
- Supports custom adapters if you want to teach it new file formats.
- Requires external helper programs like pandoc and ffmpeg to read non-text files.
- Command-line interface requires comfort with the terminal.
- Uses a custom licence instead of a standard open-source permit.
Manual file conversion and opening individual documents to use Ctrl+F
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cargo install --locked ripgrep_all