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> I didn't switch from ag, [...] rg using implicit '.ignore' file (a super-generic name instead of a proper tool-specific config)

The ".ignore" name was actually suggested by the author of ag (whereas the author of rg thought it was too generic): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12568245

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Totally agree with the author of rg here. Config names should be unambiguous. Anyway, must have been something else, then. As I've said, I cannot remember what was the specific problem, only that it wasn't quite compatible with the workflow I was used to, and now it'd take another full-in attempt to switch to figure out what was so annoying to me back then.
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If you ever do, please reply to this with why.
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I was just trying to remember why I switched _to_ rg.

It's nice and everything, but I remember being happy with the tools before (I think i moved from grep to ack, then jumped due to perf to ag and for unremembered reasons to pt.)

It took me a while, but I remembered I ran into an issue with pt incorrectly guessing the encoding of some files[0].

I can't remember whether rg suffered from the same issue or not, but I do know after switching to rg everything was plain sailing and I've been happy with it since.

[0] https://github.com/monochromegane/the_platinum_searcher/issu...

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For me it was trying to add a filter to search CMake files to ag and then realizing that the code had some rather stupid design decisions that prevented it. I wrote a pull request that fixed enough things to add the filter, got ignored by the maintainer and later realized that other people had already written the same filter and were ignored too.
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