An interactive fuzzy finder for the terminal

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Description

Fnf (short for fnf's not fzy)¹ reads a list of newline-separated items from standard input and presents an incremental, interactive selection interface. As you type a query, fnf scores and filters candidates by fuzzy matching, highlighting matched characters and instantly updating the sorted list so you can quickly select the best match.

¹ Fnf is a fork of the original fzy tool, which introduces several new features, such as support for 256 and 24-bit colors, customizable padding, and multi-selection capabilities. For detailed usage instructions and additional information, please refer to the manpage.

Installation

Fnf is availible in multiple package repositories. If not packaged for your system, perform a manual installation as follows:

mkdir build && cd build
git clone https://github.com/leo-arch/fnf
cd fnf
make
sudo make install

The PREFIX environment variable can be used to specify the install location (the default is /usr/local).

Note

If not running on Linux, you may need to use gmake instead of make.

Use with clifm

Just run clifm as follows:

clifm --fnftab

Note

You need at least clifm 1.12.9.

Sorting

Fnf attempts to present the best matches first. The following considerations are weighted when sorting:

• It prefers consecutive characters: file will match file over filter.
• It prefers matching the beginning of words: amp is likely to match app/models/posts.rb.
• It prefers shorter matches: abce matches abcdef over abc de.
• It prefers shorter candidates: test matches tests over testing.