ripgrep-all is a command-line utility that extends ripgrep to perform regular expression searches across binary files, compressed archives, and media formats. It functions as a universal text extractor that converts non-plain-text formats, such as PDFs, E-books, and Office documents, into searchable text.
The tool uses a system of adapters to transform binary data into plain text and utilizes a local database to cache these extracted versions, accelerating repeated search operations. It identifies file types by analyzing header magic bytes rather than relying on file extensions.
The project covers recursive archive traversal for searching inside nested zip and tar files, as well as the retrieval of media metadata, subtitles, and chapters from video and audio containers. It also provides a mechanism to integrate custom extraction scripts for proprietary file formats.