Option to print file paths as file URLs

Printing file paths as file URLs is very handy since you can click on them and the file will open. This happens in Konsole at least.

Do other command line tools have an option like this? I don't think I've seen anything like it.

@BurntSushi

@BurntSushi: I don't know off the top of my head. You also encounter such such links while paging log output, for example.

To be clear, this isn't a question but a feature request. 🙂

Similar feature requests

Added value

Quicker access to files due to clickable paths in KDE Konsole, macOS Terminal, ...
URLs can be read by wget and curl

echo -e "/path1\n/path2" | xargs -n1 -I{} echo file://{}
file:///path1
file:///path2

You may do the same for rg without modifying it.

I think I'm going to close this. I don't see a lot of other tools doing this, and it should be possible to write a wrapper script to do this for you if you really want it.

@BurntSushi

@BurntSushi:
Important interesting precedent: https://github.com/systemd/systemd/blob/903511951892008b991991962fef2e8ecc65bc6c/NEWS#L220-L232.

I think this should be reopened and properly considered. Its insanely useful. Certain terminal apps such as iterm2 does it by default. But it could work across ALL of them if rg outputted links with the file:// syntax.

@BurntSushi

@BurntSushi I am not quite sure how this is implemented, but I just learned that ls has a feature ls --hyperlink=auto (or always or never), which causes it to emit things with ANSI shell magic that makes them clickable links in my terminal. Here's an example:

alexgaynor@penguin ~/p/step-expirements> ls --hyperlink=always example.py
example.py
alexgaynor@penguin ~/p/step-expirements> ls --hyperlink=always example.py | xxd
00000000: 1b5d 383b 3b66 696c 653a 2f2f 7065 6e67  .]8;;file://peng
00000010: 7569 6e2f 686f 6d65 2f61 6c65 7867 6179  uin/home/alexgay
00000020: 6e6f 722f 7072 6f6a 6563 7473 2f73 7465  nor/projects/ste
00000030: 702d 6578 7069 7265 6d65 6e74 732f 6578  p-expirements/ex
00000040: 616d 706c 652e 7079 0765 7861 6d70 6c65  ample.py.example
00000050: 2e70 791b 5d38 3b3b 070a                 .py.]8;;..

If ls can have nice things, surely a program as awesome as rg can 😂

@alex

This is fairly comprehensive documentation on the hyperlink feature that @alex mentioned: https://gist.github.com/egmontkob/eb114294efbcd5adb1944c9f3cb5feda

Any chance this will be reopened? As mentioned above, there is widespread support for hyperlinks on modern terminal emulators and tools like ls have built-in support for this.

FYI: Here is a wrapper implementation that actually allows you to click on results and open them in your editor at the matched line. https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/kittens/hyperlinked_grep.html

Note that it works with the kitty terminal.

@BurntSushi

@BurntSushi would you be so kind and reconsider? it would be amazing to have it supported out of the box and not have to use wrappers

The following things seem to be needed for supporting hyperlinked file paths in ripgrep. I'm just writing for no reason, maybe it's useful.

Resolve paths to absolute paths (I would suggest do so without touching the filesystem, don't want canonicalization) and url escape paths to be printable-ascii-safe as file:// URIs.
Lookup current hostname (bonus feature but should preferably be in the URL according to the spec, this seems to be a bit of a layer-busting complication)
Add cli parameter --hyperlink={always|ansi|auto|never} (I don't know if ansi is useful here, but I think so)
Use the hyperlink escapes in the printer crate. I'm not sure if it's a great fit to try to put it inside termcolor - even if the spec says it works very similarly to colors.

This feature is supported with the same escape code in Linux (various terminals including gnome-terminal), Windows (microsoft/terminal), macos (iTerm2). The pager less supports it in new versions.

@bluss

@bluss Thanks for laying that out! Some quick feedback:

If possible, I'd like to avoid the hostname lookup aspect of this. You're spot on about it being layer busting. I think the key thing here is, what does the hostname buy us? i.e., What do we lose if we don't bother with it.
Putting this inside of termcolor might be nice to be honest, especially if it's an ANSI escape sequence. Or at least, putting the emission of that ANSI escape inside termcolor would be good. Having it be outside of termcolor would probably be more problematic.
When supporting the legacy Windows console, I think we would just not emit the escape sequence, like we do now for things not supported by the Windows console.

I think that's all I can think of for right now. I'll re-open.

@ltrzesniewski

@ltrzesniewski

Thanks for your builds!

However, the hyperlinks seem not to work under tmux (ls still works, though). Tested in kitty and alacritty.

@097115

@097115 Excerpt from https://superuser.com/questions/1771573/file-hyperlink-not-working-under-tmux :

Support for hyperlinks has been added to tmux in Git a few months ago and will be available in the next release, probably 3.4

@ltrzesniewski

I'm on 3.4 and as I said in my first comment, ls --hyperlink=always does work for me in tmux. While @ltrzesniewski's custom build of rg doesn't.

@097115

@097115 thanks for your feedback. I'll take a look.

@097115

@097115 I believe this is an issue in tmux, and have reported it here: tmux/tmux#3525

Thanks again, Lucas!

For anyone following this issue, there is active discussion about adding support for it in this PR: #2483

Opinions are welcome because this is clearly a very thorny feature to add support for. It is not simple and it looks like it is going to be integration specific. I won't be surprised if I get this wrong in some way in the initial release unfortunately.

hyperlink: rejigger how hyperlinks work

Support for hyperlinks is on master. I would love feedback here: #2611

textproc/ripgrep: update to 14.0.2

Navigation Menu

Repository navigation

Option to print file paths as file URLs #665

32 remaining items

Metadata

Assignees

Labels

Projects

Milestone

Relationships

Development

Option to print file paths as file URLs #665

Description

Activity

BurntSushi commented on Nov 6, 2017

sanmai-NL commented on Nov 7, 2017

kpp commented on Nov 23, 2017

BurntSushi commented on Jan 31, 2018

sanmai-NL commented on Sep 15, 2018

adrianocr commented on Jul 22, 2019

alex commented on Jun 28, 2020

saleemrashid commented on Jun 28, 2020

mx-psi commented on Aug 5, 2020

kovidgoyal commented on Oct 6, 2020

adrian-gierakowski commented on Feb 6, 2021

bluss commented on May 13, 2021

BurntSushi commented on May 13, 2021

32 remaining items

097115 commented on Apr 10, 2023

nbenitez commented on Apr 10, 2023

097115 commented on Apr 10, 2023

ltrzesniewski commented on Apr 10, 2023

ltrzesniewski commented on Apr 12, 2023

097115 commented on Apr 13, 2023

BurntSushi commented on Sep 22, 2023

BurntSushi commented on Sep 25, 2023

Metadata

Metadata

Assignees

Labels

Projects

Milestone

Relationships

Development

Issue actions