Every developer needs a good way to search a text within a directory. And for a some time now I have been using and has been satisfied with something like:

bash $ find ./config/ -type f | xargs grep "8080" --color

Which I run from the terminal (outside of vim)

It works but then it can be better. So I looked for another option and found Ack. It is said to be designed as an alternative to grep for programmers according to its man page.

From the terminal you can use it as follows:

bash $ ack --html site-menu-container ./_site/

Which will find the text site-menu-container on all html files within the ./_site directory.

Note that the directory and the filetype options are optional. But this wont work well with vim right out of the box. Thankfully, there already has been a vim plugin for this which is mileszs/ack.vim.

So install that plugin and you will be able to run ack within vim like this:

vim :Ack --html site-menu-container ./_site/

Results will be shown on vim's quickfix window. And yes, that is capital letter A when running ack within vim.