Fzf

Christian Külker

0.1.2

2023-04-12

fzf is an interactive filter program that can be used to search for items in a list. For example, it can be used to interactively match filenames in a list of files.

  1. Interactive interface: fzf provides an easy way to search through large collections of files, command histories, and other types of data.

  2. Customizable: fzf is customizable via environment variables FZF_DEFAULT_COMMAND and FZF_DEFAULT_OPTS, allowing users to configure it to suit their specific needs. It has a wide range of options that can be used to add functionality and integrate with other tools.

  3. Some external programs, like zsh, vim and tmux have plugins to interact with fzf.

  4. Versatile: fzf can be used for a variety of tasks, such as navigating files, searching command history, selecting processes to kill, and more. It can also be integrated with other tools such as vim, tmux, and zsh.

Installation

aptitude install fzf

Source

Source: https://github.com/junegunn/fzf

Usage

Safe Results in a File

Search for ‘book’ in PDF files interactively and save the result in results.txt:

# Run
find / -name "*.pdf*"|fzf > results.txt
# Then type 'book'
# The results are displayed in a list with one line highlighted.
# Press <ENTER> to save that line into 'results.txt' and end the fzf session

Select Command History

This example will display your command history and allow you to search through it using fzf. You can then select a command and press enter to execute it.

history | fzf

Edit the Result in One Go

This example will open the file you select in vim. You can use fzf to quickly search and select the file you want to open.

# This will search all files below the current directory
# The selected file will be opened in vim
fzf --print0 | xargs -0 -o vim
# The same, shorter, but less robust would be
vim $(fzf)

Chaining patterns

You can use the interactive technique above to search for complex things.

  1. Find a file that contains exactly the word ‘book’
  2. And is a Markdown file
  3. And the path starts with ‘scratch’

You would enter interactively

'book .md$ ^scratch

This could for example give file scratch/todo/books-to-write.md.

fzf Kind of matching Notes
smthng fuzzy-match Items that match smthng
’calm exact-match (quoted) Items that include calm
^movie prefix-exact-match Items that start with movie
.pdf$ suffix-exact-match Items that end with .pdf
!water inverse-exact-match Items that do not include water
!^movie inverse-prefix-exact-match Items that do not start with movie
!.pdf$ inverse-suffix-exact-match Items that do not end with .pdf

Change Directories

This example should not be taken too serious. This command will allow you to quickly navigate your file system using fzf. It will list all directories under the current directory and allow you to select one to change into. However it also will display dot-files. So that is basically useless in ~/ or a git repository.

cd $(find . -type d -print 2>/dev/null | fzf)

This improved example is similar to the previous one, but it uses the -not -path */\.* option to exclude directories that begin with a dot (i.e., dot-files). This ensures that only visible directories are displayed in the fzf interface, making it easier to navigate the file system.

cd $(find . -type d -not -path '*/\.*' -print 2>/dev/null | fzf)

Select Git Commit and Show the Commit

git show "$(git log --oneline | fzf | awk '{print $1}')"

This command shows the list of Git commits in the current repository using git log --oneline, filters them using fzf, extracts the commit hash using awk, and then displays the selected commit using git show.

History

Version Date Notes
0.1.2 2023-04-12 Add git example
0.1.1 2023-03-30 Improve writing, add 2 examples
0.1.0 2023-02-16 Initial release
  • Fzf