ack utility + how to stop search in the file when the first string was found

Question

subject ack utility

I don't sure if it possible but I must to ask the following question Because I have a big problem -

I use the ack utility to find string in very very very large files

The problem is when ack find the string in the file , but ack continue to search the same string until end of the file

my question is if it possible to stop search in the file when the first string was found ?

My problem is that ack take allot of time because the biggest files

any way my target is only to find the first match string and get out immediately from the file to other files

can some on have creative idea how to use ack as I explained ?

  ./ack -a some_string  /var 

Answer 1

I find the solution

need to write:

  ./ack -a --max-count=1 some_string   /var 

Answer 2

The only ack that i found is the Kanji converter - is that what you mean?

grep can do the job and you can stop it whenever you want.:

Here is the appropriate option:

-m NUM, --max-count=NUM
 Stop  reading  a  file  after  NUM  matching  lines.

You can use it as follows:

grep -m 1 some_string file_name

Check out the man page of grep for more details.