how do i search for an empty string in PowerShell?

[eruizc-dev]

What version of ripgrep are you using?

ripgrep 12.1.1
-SIMD -AVC (compiled)
+SIMD +AVX (runtime)

How did you install ripgrep?

sudo pacman -S ripgrep

What operating system are you using ripgrep on?

• OS: Manjaro Linux x86_64
• Desktop: Plasma 5.19.5
• Shell: pwsh PowerShell 7.0.3

Describe your bug.

I cannot perform an empty search using Powershel Core 7. This causes programs like fzf to fail when ran on powershell.

What are the steps to reproduce the behavior?

The following code produces error: The following required arguments were not provided: <PATTERN>

rg ''

The use of "" and [string]::Empty produces the same output

What is the expected behavior?

I expect RipGrep to match all lines in all files like it does with bash. In fact, you can try these two commands and you will see pwsh fail and bash succeed.

pwsh -c "rg ''"

bash -c "rg ''"

[BurntSushi]

Try rg "".

[eruizc-dev]

Try rg "".

I forgot to specified I tried that and [string]::Empty and none of those worked

[BurntSushi]

I'm not sure then. My guess is that this is a PowerShell issue and not a ripgrep issue, but it will be a while before I'm able to spin up a Windows machine and test this for myself. Others are encouraged to weigh in here!

[mklement0]

Indeed, this is purely a PowerShell issue: empty-string arguments are simply discarded, regrettably; argument-passing to external programs has always been fundamentally broken in PowerShell, notably also with respect to handling embedded " chars.; backward-compatibility concerns have prevented a fix so far - see PowerShell/PowerShell#1995

Workarounds:

PS> rg --% ""

This workaround is future-proof, but the use of --% has important side effects: see --%, the stop-parsing symbol.

For now, the following works too, but it shouldn't, and if PowerShell/PowerShell#1995 ever gets fixed - there's talk of providing a fix via an experimental feature now - it will stop working:

PS> rg '""'

[BurntSushi]

Amazing answer!!! Thank you so much. :-)