Rak, a grep replacement in pure-Ruby
Rak is a tool for searching directories for files matching a regexp, like a more convenient grep. It gives you pretty highlighted output, and uses the Ruby regexp syntax. To install type gem install rak.
Rak is implemented in pure Ruby, so it should work on all platforms. Windows folk will probably find they need to use the –nocolour option (I will fix this next time I boot into Windows for any reason).
NB. Rak is an almost perfect clone of the Perl tool Ack by Andy Lester. He should get all the credit for the idea.
[...] Normally we use meta-programming in Ruby for our own convenience as developers, and we swallow the speed hit it gives us as a reasonable trade-off. The way Rak is implemented turns this on its head. [...]
[...] Daniel Lucraft recently released Rak, a ruby powered grep replacement. [...]