Fuzzy file search in linux console

Question

Does anybody know a way to perform a quick fuzzy search from linux console?

Quite often I come accross situation when I need to find a file in a project but I don't remember the exact filename. In Sublime text editor I would press Ctrl-P and type a part of the name, which will produce a list of the files to select from. That's an amazing feature I'm quite happy with. The problem is that in most cases I have to browse a code in a console on remote machines via ssh. So I'm wondering is there a tool similar to "Go Anywhere" feature for Linux console?

Answer 1

You may find fzf useful. It's a general purpose fuzzy finder written in Go that can be used with any list of things: files, processes, command history, git branches, etc.

Its install script will setup CTRL-T keybinding for your shell. The following GIF shows how it works.

Answer 2

Most of these answers won't do fuzzy searching like sublime text does it -- they may match part of the answer, but they don't do the nice 'just find all the letters in this order' behavior.

I think this is a bit closer to what you want. I put together a special version of cd ('fcd') that uses fuzzy searching to find the target directory. Super simple -- just add this to your bashrc:

function joinstr { local IFS="$1"; shift; echo "$*"; } function fcd { cd $(joinstr \* $(echo "$*" | fold -w1))* } 

This will add an * between each letter in the input, so if I want to go to, for instance,

/home/dave/results/sample/today 

I can just type any of the following:

fcd /h/d/r/spl/t fcd /h/d/r/s/t fcd /h/d/r/sam/t fcd /h/d/r/s/ty 

Using the first as an example, this will execute cd /*h*/*d*/*r*/*s*p*l*/*t* and let the shell sort out what actually matches.

As long as the first character is correct, and one letter from each directory in the path is written, it will find what you're looking for. Perhaps you can adapt this for your needs? The important bit is:

$(joinstr \* $(echo "$*" | fold -w1))* 

which creates the fuzzy search string.