fzf VS broot

bat is a modern replacement for cat with syntax highlighting and themes. I use it for a lot of things, but the coolest use of it that I have is to use it to preview files while fuzzy searching using fzf and opening that file in neovim.

The results are piped to fzf-tmux (ships with fzf), where I can fuzzy search for one or more directories

3. Fzf

I installed fzf just to get a short list of most fitting entries from history when I Ctrl+R

I really like using something like fuzzy search for menus like these. https://github.com/Cloudef/bemenu is pretty cool in that it works both in a terminal, X11 and on Wayland, so if you want to do something graphical later you can easily migrate. There's also fzf and skim, which work similarly but are only for the terminal.

On the command line, I have been using fzf - in combination with fd - for quite some time now. I use it to search for directories, previous commands in the shell history and other search/filter related tasks. Luckily, there is also FZF for JavaScript, which is an unofficial port of fzf for the browser. We will use this module to power our search.

cd ~ sudo apt remove fzf git clone https://github.com/junegunn/fzf .fzf bash .fzf/install fzf --version

Fzf is another awesome tool that lets you do fuzzy search, and it's incredibly versatile.

Another way is to set HISTORY to a large number, say 10,000 or more, then install and use fzf. With fzf, you can quickly recall any command you have ever typed with a fuzzy search back through your voluminous command history.

https://github.com/junegunn/fzf with custom settings and tweaks. Absolutely indispensable for the search in hoarded data.

As a macOS user, it boils my brain whenever I've to type in something like ~/Library/Application Support/org.rust-lang.Cargo/config.toml. macOS users have been begging CLI tools to support XDG variables on macOS too. Setting defaults is a strong indication to the community what should be the "preferred" locations. The defaults defined in your article will invariably lead to some authors saying that if that path is good enough for cargo, then it is good enough for their tool. Even the latest draft RFC acknowledges that macOS should use XDG variables too. I've written more about this here.

Definitely a fair sentiment. I personally like having a static visualizer handy because sometimes I just want to do a quick assessment rather than boot up an entire interactive CLI, but if interactivity is what you want broot has you covered :]

You may be interested in broot

I think you’re conflating different projects.

There are projects that aim for a better user experience, with better command line interface, defaults, performance and UI. These are of course breaking changes and the programs can’t be used as drop in replacement. Some examples are

- ls => exa (https://github.com/ogham/exa)

- grep => ripgrep (https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep)

- cat => bat (https://github.com/sharkdp/bat)

- tree => broot (https://github.com/Canop/broot)

The person you’re replying to was speaking of a different project - uutils (https://github.com/uutils/coreutils). These are drop in replacements with identical interfaces (modulo bugs).

Even better broot, previously adding view verb to config:

Broot: https://github.com/Canop/broot

- will navigate via broot if it is a directory or will view it on a pager --bind 'ctrl-/:execute( if [[ -d {} ]]; then broot {} > /dev/tty else bat --paging=always -pf -l=sh {} > /dev/tty fi)' // Also can add another condition to check file-mimetype if an image to preview it

Broot is a tree alternative with a better user experience, and you can use it to navigate a file structure. It's fast and respects .gitignore. You can cd into a directory from the tree view, open sub-directories in a panel, and even preview files. It has excellent keyboard navigation as well. It has many more features.

broot