Alternatively, xref--collect-matches-1 could apply the limit itself, no
matter whether grep or rg is used. And it could make sure to only do that
after the last match. This might be the slower option, but hard to say in
advance, some comparison benchmark could help here.
I think until a long string is inserted to the buffer, truncating the
string in the variable in xref--collect-matches-1 should be much faster.
That aside, could you explain the difference between the regexps? Do grep
and rg use different colors or something like that? Ideally, of course,
that would be just 1 regexp (if that's possible without loss in
performance, or significant loss in clarify).
They should be merged into one regexp indeed. Because after customizing it
to the rg regexp, grep output doesn't highlight matches anymore (I use both
grep and rg interchangeably by different commands).
Currently their separate regexps are:
grep:
"\033\\[0?1;31m
\\(.*?\\)
\033\\[[0-9]*m"
rg:
"\033\\[[0-9]*m
\033\\[[0-9]*1m
\033\\[[0-9]*1m
\\(.*?\\)
\033\\[[0-9]*0m"
That could be combined into one regexp:
"\033\\[[0-9?;]*m
\\(?:\033\\[[0-9]*1m\\)\\{0,2\\}
\\(.*?\\)
\033\\[[0-9]*0?m"