Hey,
As an avid CLI user, I always aimed to master non-interactive tools to perform most of my work, given that they are easy to use, create, extend, and connect.
However, I found myself dealing with software projects with many files (mostly under the yoke of corporate oppression; an ordeal which I endure to sustain myself, as most of those reading me do, and therefore I will not go further into this topic) and started to hit the limits of non-interactive tools to find and edit files. Indeed, I could go faster if I followed the temptation of monstrous IDEs, as I did in my innocent past.
I did not despair, as naturally I heard of the usefulness of interactive fuzzy finders such as fzf. After spending an afternoon evaluating the tool, I concluded that it indeed increases the complexity of my workflow. Still, this complexity is managed in a sensible way that follows the UNIX tradition.
I now ask you two general questions:
- Did you reach similar conclusions to me and decide to use interactive fuzzy finders to solve working on software projects with many files?
- If you use fzf or similar tools, what can you tell me about your workflow? Any other third-party tools? Do you integrate it into your scripts? Any advice that you can give me out of a long time of experience using the tool that is not easily conveyed by the documentation?
I also ask this very specific question:
- The one part of fzf which I found missing was a way to interact with the results of grep, and to automatically place the selected file(s) in the prompt or an editor. For that, I created the following two commands. Do you have a similar workflow when you want to bring the speed of fuzzy finding to grep?
#! /usr/bin/env bash
# gf: grep + fzf
# basically a wrapper for 'grep <ARGS> | fzf | cut -f 1 -d:'
# print usage on -h/--help
if [[ "$1" == "-h" || "$1" == "--help" ]]; then
echo "Usage: gf <grep-args>"
echo
echo "~~~ that feel when no 'gf' ~~~"
echo
echo "- Basically a wrapper for 'grep <ARGS> | fzf | cut -f 1 -d:'"
echo "- Opens fzf with grep results, and prints the selected filename(s)"
echo "- Note: As this is meant to search files, it already adds the -r flag"
echo
echo "Example:"
echo " $ nvim \`gf foobar\`"
echo " $ gf foobar | xargs nvim"
exit 0
fi
# run grep with arguments, pipe to fzf, and print the filename(s) selected
custom_grep () {
grep -E --color=always --binary-files=without-match --recursive "$@"
}
remove_color () {
sed -E 's/\x1b\[[0-9;]*[mK]//g'
}
custom_fzf () {
fzf --ansi --height ~98%
}
grep_output=$(custom_grep "$@")
if [[ "$?" -ne 0 ]]; then
exit 1
else
echo "$grep_output" | custom_fzf | remove_color | cut -f 1 -d:
fi
#! /usr/bin/env bash
# ge: grep + fzf + editor
# basically a wrapper for 'grep <ARGS> | fzf | cut -f 1 -d: | $EDITOR'
# print usage on -h/--help
if [[ "$1" == "-h" || "$1" == "--help" ]]; then
echo "Usage: ge <grep-args>"
echo
echo "- Basically a wrapper for 'grep <ARGS> | fzf | cut -f 1 -d: | \$EDITOR'"
echo "- Opens fzf with grep results, and edits the selected file(s)"
echo "- Note: As this is meant to search files, it already adds the -r flag"
echo "- Note: Internally, it uses the 'gf' command"
echo
echo "Example:"
echo " $ ge foobar"
exit 0
fi
# takes output from 'gf' and opens it in $EDITOR
grep_fzf_output=$(gf "$@")
if [[ -n "$grep_fzf_output" ]]; then
$EDITOR "$grep_fzf_output"
fi
Have a wonderful day, you CLI cowboys.
Tbh these scripts are for my personal use, written in the way that makes sense for me. I only open sourced it as a joke an as an example of how reinventing your own wheel is not that hard sometimes, and comes with the benefit of doing just what you need it to do.
Actually I was thinking of adding a sysget fallback, as I might need to do some debian/fedora hacking soon.