ack 1.66 adds a grab bag of features, prepares for GUI version

My text-finding utility ack has just seen its 1.66 release. It's available on the ack homepage or by installing App::Ack from the CPAN shell.

The features in 1.66 include the -1 switch, which makes ack stop at the first result it finds, and the --passthru switch, which lets ack's color-highlighting work when filtering output from a file, such as when tailing a log file. Also, the -o and --output options now print all matches, not just the first from each line.

There's work behind the scenes, too. Gabor Szabo is working on a windowed version of ack called wack, and I've worked with him to make ack's internals more modular and more overloadable so that ack can run in a GUI environment. I'm excited to see what Gabor comes up with!

ack has a mailing list for users to share requests and ideas about enhancing ack. Find the sign-up form on the ack homepage.