I really like the suggested command `<my editor> $(fzf)` to quickly open files in <my editor> relative to the directory I am in. However, when I abort the fuzzy find with esc, it still opens <my editor> without a file input, which is not what I want, so I wrote a little script for my shell config to prevent this:
fuzz() {
file=$(fzf)
if [ ${#file} -gt 0 ]; then
nvim "$file" # or any editor you prefer
else
:
fi
}
but don't press enter. Press tab instead. The shell will expand the $(), which will run fzf and let you choose a file. When you've made your choice, fzf will exit, and your choice will be written in place of the $(), so you can see the result before you run it. It works with any command, not just vim. It's particularly useful when doing multi-selects. And if you press ESC then nothing gets written.
I've only tested this with zsh, not sure how other shells behave. And you may need to alter fzf's default command or pipe something into it.
I hope this article along with this comment serves as a gateway drug for people to realize fzf is also really useful in injecting some interactivity into their shell scripts. It feels different to write scripts which call down fzf from the heavens for a split second.
I am very new to shell scripting and as I wrote the script, I actually just realized that I can plug anything into fzf that is split into lines of text and that I can use the selected output for further processing, since it’s just text.
I just love how simple it is to stick anything together via the universal plain text interface in the shell and even pipe this text/dataflow through interactive tools like fzf, as you just mentioned.
You could also map <ctrl-t> to fzf and then do `$EDITOR <ctrl-t>`. This works as you’d expect and with any command. I believe the instructions to set it up are in the fzf readme.
I like `<editor> <ctrl-t>`; ctrl-t opens fzf and pastes any selected files onto the command line. If you choose to abort you end up back at the prompt after `<editor> `.
