How can I install and use ack library on Windows?

Question

I have never used Perl, but I am really impressed by the ack, which I would like to use for source code searching, etc.

Can anyone guide me of how to make use of this ex

Answer 1

If you have cygwin installed, you can simply download the standalone version. Perl is installed with cygwin. Here are the steps:

$ vim .bash_profile

Remove the comments from the lines:

# if [ -d "${HOME}/bin" ] ; then
#  PATH="${HOME}/bin:${PATH}"
# fi

Load the changes:

$ source .bash_profile

Make a bin directory:

$ mkdir ~/bin

Download ack (from the homepage):

$ curl https://beyondgrep.com/ack-2.22-single-file > ~/bin/ack && chmod 0755 ~/bin/ack

Note: you will have to manually install curl as it doesn't come with cygwin by default.