Happy Friday!

If you’ve seen my Shell Wizardry video, you’ll know I love fzf. But in my excitement to try to use it in as many clever places as possible, I failed to notice the even more useful piece which is the shell integration.

Simply add one line to the end of your shell config file and the magic begins (start a new shell to see the effects).

# bash
eval "$(fzf --bash)"
# zsh
source <(fzf --zsh)
# fish
fzf --fish | source

Inserting files/directories into commands (ctrl+t)

Whenever you’re typing out a command and intend to target a specific file or directory, just hit ctrl+t. It fuzzy finds on all files and directories in your current working directory and whatever you select, it injects into your current cursor position (so make sure to add a space before hitting ctrl+t). This completely kills the need to run nvim tab, type a couple characters, enter, tab, tab, enter, tab, type characters, tab, enter. Just nvim, space, ctrl+t, fuzzy type the file/dir you want and hit enter.

History (ctrl+r)

It replaces the crappy default bck-i-search you get when trying to search your command history with fzf. It’ll show things in the order you expect, but then just start typing to find what you’re looking for.

Changing directories (alt+c)

cd-ing around is doubtless one of the most common activities for most of us in the shell. There are other handy utilities for dealing with this, like z, but fzf provides another nice one. Just hit alt+c and it’ll open up fzf with all of the directories in the current path and it’ll cd you to whichever you select. Just type a few characters, select the right one, hit enter. You’re where you want to be. This is especially handy with deeply nested directory structures.

Completion (**)

Saving the best for last. Shell completion (tab-completion) is already a life saver, but fzf takes it to the next level. On commands that supports shell completion, just type ** and then hit tab, and it’ll load the relevant items in.

And this also let’s you do fuzzy finding from a relative path such as nvim ../../** instead of the current directory.

By default this only supports a subset of commands, but you can easily customize this. More details on fuzzy completion from the docs.

Wrapping it up

The fzf shell integration is honestly brilliant and simplifies a lot of common repetitive tasks that you’ll do day after day. These little quality of life improvements add up a lot over time.

I highly recommend giving it a try.

– Logan / Terminal Velocity