how to limit output when line length is long

[jsharpe-ctm]

if ripgrep finds something on a line that is 8 billion characters long (minified javascript, for example), it monopolizes the output as all 8 billion of those characters are wrapped into 7 million lines of output and makes it difficult to scroll past all of that.

Is it possible to limit output in cases like this? If something matches on the 7 thousandth character I'm probably not interested in it.

Thanks!

[BurntSushi]

Yes. The -M/--max-columns flag will limit the length of each line printed.

[jsharpe-ctm]

ah, awesome! ty!

[stdedos]

Is it possible to smartly auto-detect the width of the terminal, and stop at that point? (so that each match is one line, "no matter what")

[atomicmattie]

Is it possible to smartly auto-detect the width of the terminal, and stop at that point? (so that each match is one line, "no matter what")

So that's a little tricky. The naïve way would be

rg word -M "${COLUMNS}"

But the problem is that, by default, line numbers are printed immediately before the text (and are super useful!), so they'll still overflow a line. They also have varying widths, so it's not just a simple math problem. You could try hoping they're no more than, say, five characters:

rg word -M "$((COLUMNS-5))"