Use rg --json for highlighting the matches

[weeman1337]

rg provides a --json option that returns offsets of the matches. This can be used to highlight the matches.

It should use json_decode or vim.json.decode depending on availablility where vim.json has priority. vim.json is going to be shipped with nvim 0.6.

relates to nvim-telescope/telescope.nvim#1448

[jesseleite]

Love it! Too add to that, I feel like it should have no problem highlighting more complex regex searches as well, which --json would absolutely help with.

I'm curious how --json would affect performance though.

Also, @TC72 had done some experimenting with highlighting on my old live_grep_raw PR as well; Posting his thoughts here in case it helps... nvim-telescope/telescope.nvim#670 (comment)

[TC72]

I have code which works thanks to @Conni2461 giving me some code to convert ansi codes to highlighting.
But overall the way I implemented it was a mess.

I think we could give --json a try, my only concern is the sheer amount of data we'll get back from it.
As @weeman1337 has already spotted, this patch should improve json parsing:
neovim/neovim#14871

[Conni2461]

I already said it once but again vim.fn.json_decode was never an option because we are in an fast event. You cant call viml inside a fast event. :help api-fast

Thats why vim.json is such a big deal not because its 2.5 times faster.

[TC72]

@Conni2461 thanks for explaining.

[jugarpeupv]

Hi, sorry but i dont understand how to use --json to highlight the matches (tried passing that in rg args but got nil:nil:nil). Is it possible to highlight matches when additional arguments are passed? Like this

[weeman1337]

Hi, sorry but i dont understand how to use --json to highlight the matches

Hi @jugarpeupv . It has not yet been implemented.