How can I show ack results and number of occurrences

Question

ack foo * 

returns a list of strings:

 bar.txt 28: this is foo stuff dump.txt 12: results of foo gobs.txt 1137: more lines with foo 

and

 ack -c -l 

returns

 3 

My question is: how can I show both? I need a list of lines, as in the first example, and a count of the number of lines matching in the second example.

Answer 1

you can use

ack -hc ( -h is short for --no-filename ) to get the total.

According to the documentation / man page ack :

-c, --count

Suppress normal output; instead, print the number of matching lines for each input file. If -l is valid, it will only show the number of lines for each file that has the corresponding lines. Without -l some line counts can be zeros.

When combined with -h ( --no-filename ) ack only one total is output.

Here's what worked for me (expanded on @Jordan's answer) -

ack 'pattern' && ack -hc 'pattern'

or better (IMO):

ack 'pattern'; ack -hc 'pattern'

As far as I understand, using && , the second command depends on the first, returning to start; use ; instead, it will run them both, one after the other, independently. In this case, I think that ; more appropriate.

Answer 2

It is not possible to get ack to output both things that you want in the same command. The easiest way to get what you want is to link both teams with && .