Why can't ripgrep search the output of a Write-Host command on Windows?

[Saya47]

Please tick this box to confirm you have reviewed the above.

• I have a different issue.

What version of ripgrep are you using?

ripgrep 14.1.1 (rev 4649aa9)

How did you install ripgrep?

scoop

What operating system are you using ripgrep on?

Windows 11, PowerShell 7.4.2

Describe your bug.

ripgrep does not read stdin from Write-Host

#643

What are the steps to reproduce the behavior?

02:05 ~
❯ echo hello | rg y

02:06 ~
✖ echo hello | rg he
hello

02:06 ~
❯ write-host hello | rg y
hello

02:06 ~
✖ write-host hello | rg he
hello

02:07 ~
✖

What is the actual behavior?

ripgrep does not read stdin from Write-Host

What is the expected behavior?

ripgrep should work on Write-Host

[BurntSushi]

What happens if you do rg y -?

My guess is that Write-Host isn't writing to stdout. Which means this is expected behavior. But I'm not familiar with Windows too much and I don't know what Write-Host is. Maybe you can do some debugging by comparing with other tools.

[ltrzesniewski]

• Write-Host writes directly to PowerShell (the host), skipping the pipeline (stdin/stdout).

  The Write-Host cmdlet's primary purpose is to produce for-(host)-display-only output, such as printing colored text like when prompting the user for input in conjunction with Read-Host. Write-Host uses the ToString() method to write the output. By contrast, to output data to the pipeline, use Write-Output or implicit output.

• Write-Output writes to the pipeline (stdout), and echo is an alias to it.

  Write-Output sends objects to the primary pipeline, also known as the success stream. To send error objects to the error stream, use Write-Error.

=> ripgrep can't work with Write-Host, as it doesn't send its value to stdout. You can see this behavior with how ripgrep adds color to its output: