Making Better Use of Your .Ackrc File
Many command line utils have a . file that people rarely use. Ack is one of them.
For a project I’m working on, there’s a var folder (ignored in git) where all the logs go. When I perform an ack search, I have no interest in ack looking through the var folder every single time.
By default, ack only checks your ~/.ackrc file for it’s default switches. You can have per directory ack settings if you add this to your .bash_profile:
export ACKRC=".ackrc"
Now you don’t have to worry about random log file being searched every time you try to find something.
new-host-3:dev jhaddad$ cat .ackrc
--ignore-dir=var/
Just add whatever switches you want, one per line.