rg/Q/How can I search for the boolean AND of multiple terms?

• How can I search for the boolean/AND of multiple terms in rg?

  • My Notes

    • initial query

      • using rg/-e PATTERN multiple times searches for the boolean/OR of all the terms; according to rg/manpage,
        • A pattern to search for. This option can be provided multiple times, where all patterns given are searched, in addition to any patterns provided by -f/--file. Lines matching at least one of the provided patterns are printed. This flag can also be used when searching for patterns that start with a dash.
      • one common way I've used in the past with grep is piping; one can do grep lazygit | grep worktree to find places that reference both lazygit and worktree. But when using options like rg/--files-with-matches, not certain that would work.

    • follow-up reflection

  • Answer

    • AI/Response
      • There is no single rg flag for "match all of these patterns" the way repeated rg/-e PATTERN means "match any of these patterns" (boolean/OR per rg/manpage and the rg/-e PATTERN excerpt).
      • Line-level AND (each pattern appears on the same output line)
        • Fixed order: one regex such as foo.*bar; add rg/-w or rg/-F when you care about word boundaries or literal punctuation instead of regex syntax.
        • Default regex engine, arbitrary order: bracket permutations (foo.*bar|bar.*foo) or filter with a shell pipeline (rg 'foo' . | rg 'bar'), same spirit as the grep example in My Notes.
        • With rg/--pcre2, you can use lookaround; e.g. rg --pcre2 '(?=.*foo)(?=.*bar)' matches lines that contain both substrings (-P is the short form). Background: ripgrep FAQ — lookaround / backreferences.
      • File-level boolean/AND (each pattern appears somewhere in the same file)
        • Run rg/--files-with-matches twice: list paths for the first term, then search only those paths for the second, e.g. rg -l --null 'foo' | xargs -0 rg -l 'bar' (rg/--null emits paths separated by ASCII/C0/NUL so xargs -0 survives spaces or odd characters). Intersecting two sorted rg -l lists with comm -12 is the same idea in another shape.
      • Caveats: rg/--pcre2 is missing in some package builds (the FAQ describes the error) and is often slower than the default engine for large trees.