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Oh man that's nowhere near fair! ripgrep is one tiny little command that is mostly compatible with GNU grep. Lots of the flags are the same. And its default usage is really easy: `rg whatever`.

But I gave it ten minutes and ported part of https://github.com/BurntSushi/dotfiles/blob/bedf3598f2501ad5... to https://github.com/BurntSushi/dotfiles/blob/bedf3598f2501ad5...

Not much, but it took me some time to get the basics down.

One thing that stood out to me was that startup times are kinda brutal. I'm not sure if that's intended or if it's something about my environment:

    $ cat /tmp/murex-test
    #!/usr/bin/murex

    echo $ARGV
    $ time /tmp/murex-test
    [
        "/usr/bin/murex",
        "/tmp/murex-test"
    ]

    real    0.437
    user    0.491
    sys     0.110
    maxmem  106 MB
    faults  0

    $ murex --version
    murex v6.4.2063 (develop)
    GPL v2
    2018-2025 Laurence Morgan
That would probably be a deal breaker for me.

I got murex through the AUR: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/murex

> Oh absolutely I’m open to learning new things.

Okay then I'd say this is high contrast with your comments above!



Yeah I’ve not spent time optimising start up because it’s main emphasis is the interactive shell.

I guess you could liken it to Powershell or JVM in that the start up is generally a one time cost if you’re using it interactively.

I could certainly invest a little time on the start up though. It wouldn’t be impossible to improve things there.

> Okay then I'd say this is high contrast with your comments above!

Is it though? I didn’t say I’m adverse to learning new things. Just that I don’t want to learn replacements for the tools I’ve already memorised.

But anyway, you’ve downloaded murex so I’ll give ripgrep go. I’m sure it’ll become a staple tool for me now I’ve committed time to it :)


Yeah I started with the shell script route because it felt like the best way to get familiar with it quickly. Then I'd probably go backwards to interactive usage.

The error messages did look very nice.

I have been considering dipping my toes into a less standard shell over the past few years. It is so so so hard to break away from the ubiquitous bullshit that most of us are stuck with. I have no love for the Bourne shell and its derivatives, although zsh is some nice lipstick on a very ugly pig.

The other candidates I'm aware of are fish, nushell and oils. I think nushell is the "most" different, but the last time I tried it, I bounced off of it for reasons I can't remember.


Yeah, switching shell is a major time investment. I couldn’t blame you for sticking with the default, after all, I was initially unwilling to invest time into learning ripgrep :D

And you’re right that it wasn’t a fair a trade asking you to look at Murex in exchange for ripgrep (which is nice by the way!) but I respect that you did take a look nonetheless.




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