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Fixed Strings (-Q)

When your search term contains regex metacharacters (., [, +, *, ?, (), use -Q (--literal) to treat the pattern as a plain string.

Why You Need It​

# BAD: dots match any character
ag "192.168.1.1" access.log     # also matches "192x168y1z1"

# GOOD: exact literal match
ag -Q "192.168.1.1" access.log

Common Cases​

# Searching for function calls with parentheses
ag -Q "process.exit(0)" src/

# Searching for regex-like code in templates
ag -Q "(\d+)" templates/

# Searching for file paths with slashes
ag -Q "/var/log/nginx" config.yml

# Searching for npm package references
ag -Q "@scope/package-name" package.json

Performance Benefit​

-Q skips the PCRE compilation and matching overhead entirely, using a fast byte-string comparison instead. On large codebases, this is measurably faster for literal searches.

Combining with Other Flags​

# Case-insensitive literal search
ag -Q -i "Connection Refused" /var/log/

# Only in Python files
ag -Q --python "import os.path" src/

# List files only
ag -Q -l "DEPRECATION WARNING" .