Comment by burntsushi

To back up what I said earlier, a common case for ripgrep is to search a code repository while respecting gitignore, ignoring hidden files and ignoring binary files. Indeed, this is ripgrep's default mode.

For example, in my checkout of the Chromium repository, notice how much faster ripgrep is at this specific use case (with the right flags given to `ugrep` to make it ignore the same files):

    $ hyperfine --output pipe 'rg Openbox' 'ugrep-7.5.0 -rI --ignore-files Openbox ./'
    Benchmark 1: rg Openbox
      Time (mean ± σ):     281.0 ms ±   3.6 ms    [User: 1294.8 ms, System: 1977.6 ms]
      Range (min … max):   275.9 ms … 286.8 ms    10 runs

    Benchmark 2: ugrep-7.5.0 -rI --ignore-files Openbox ./
      Time (mean ± σ):      4.250 s ±  0.008 s    [User: 4.683 s, System: 2.154 s]
      Range (min … max):    4.242 s …  4.267 s    10 runs

    Summary
      rg Openbox ran
       15.12 ± 0.19 times faster than ugrep-7.5.0 -rI --ignore-files Openbox ./

`ugrep` actually does a lot better if you don't ask it to respect gitignore files:

    $ hyperfine --output pipe 'rg -u Openbox' 'ugrep-7.5.0 -rI Openbox ./'
    Benchmark 1: rg -u Openbox
      Time (mean ± σ):     233.9 ms ±   3.3 ms    [User: 650.4 ms, System: 2081.6 ms]
      Range (min … max):   228.8 ms … 239.8 ms    12 runs

    Benchmark 2: ugrep-7.5.0 -rI Openbox ./
      Time (mean ± σ):     605.4 ms ±   6.4 ms    [User: 1104.1 ms, System: 2710.8 ms]
      Range (min … max):   596.1 ms … 613.9 ms    10 runs

    Summary
      rg -u Openbox ran
        2.59 ± 0.05 times faster than ugrep-7.5.0 -rI Openbox ./

Even ripgrep runs a little faster. Because sometimes matching gitignores takes extra time. More so, it seems, in ugrep's case.

Now ugrep is perhaps intended to be more like a POSIX grep than ripgrep is. So you could question whether this is a fair comparison. But if you're going to bring up "ripgrep catching up to ugrep," then it's fair game, IMO, to compare ripgrep's default mode of operation with ugrep using the necessary flags to match that mode.

Repository info:

    $ git remote -v
    origin  git@github.com:nwjs/chromium.src (fetch)
    origin  git@github.com:nwjs/chromium.src (push)
    $ git rev-parse HEAD
    1e57811fe4583ac92d2f277837718486fbb98252