QuickFind

Quickfind (or qf) is a UN*X tool, inspired by TextMate's Command-T plugin, for quickly finding files and directories under your working directory. I primarily use it as a part of a fast approximate cd command and as a powerful and simple alternative for the find . | grep <pattern> idiom.

Using QuickFind

To find something, just type:

$ qf [-dfa] pattern

By default qf ignores all hidden directories/files and only prints out paths of files and directories under current directory. You can make qf show hidden files and directories with the -a option. To show only files use the -f option, and for only directories use the -d option. The default behavior is the same as -df.

qf Uses a very simple pattern matching algorithm to find what you are looking for. You specify a pattern and then qf finds all directories whose pathname includes all the letters (case insensitive) in the pattern, in the given order. The letters need not be consecutive in the path, but more weight is given to paths where the letters of the pattern are next to each other.

For example, if I were to find the location of all ABBA albums in my iTunes library:

iTunes$ qf -d abba
./Music/ABBA
./Music/ABBA/Gold_ Greatest Hits
./Books/Edwin Abbott Abbott
./Music/Black Sabbath
./Music/Black Sabbath/Sabbath Bloody Sabbath
./Music/Nat Newborn/Back To The Moon
./Music/Carbonne - Di Piazza - Manring/Carbonne - Di Piazza - Manring
./Music/Iron Maiden/The Number of the Beast
./Music/Laura Branigan/The Best of Branigan
./Music/Manu Dibango/African Soul - The Very Best of Manu Dibango
./Music/The Cranberries/Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can't We_

As you can see, all the results contain the letters "ABBA" in order, but the paths where the letters are consecutive were given first.

Or, maybe I'd like to see the tracks on the Black Sabbath's 'Sabbath Bloody Sabbath' album:

iTunes$ qf -f sabbblosabb.m4a
./Music/Black Sabbath/Sabbath Bloody Sabbath/01 Sabbath Bloody Sabbath.m4a
./Music/Black Sabbath/Sabbath Bloody Sabbath/02 A National Acrobat.m4a
./Music/Black Sabbath/Sabbath Bloody Sabbath/03 Fluff.m4a
./Music/Black Sabbath/Sabbath Bloody Sabbath/04 Sabbra Cadabra.m4a
./Music/Black Sabbath/Sabbath Bloody Sabbath/05 Killing Yourself to Live.m4a
./Music/Black Sabbath/Sabbath Bloody Sabbath/06 Who Are You_.m4a
./Music/Black Sabbath/Sabbath Bloody Sabbath/07 Looking for Today.m4a
./Music/Black Sabbath/Sabbath Bloody Sabbath/08 Spiral Architect.m4a

To use qf as a part of an approximate cd command, I have in my .bashrc a simple shell function called acd that allows me to easily jump into any subdirectory just by writing a few path fragments:

acd() {
  if [ x$1 = x ]; then
    echo "Usage: acd <pattern>"
    return 1
  fi
  cd "$(qf -d $1 | sed 1q)"
}

Building and Installing QuickFind

make
make install

By default qf installs into /usr/bin, but you can easily change the location by giving a different prefix during installation:

PREFIX=~/ make install

Similarly, since the qf Makefile only uses implicit rules, you can control the C compiler and the compiler flags with environment variables. Maybe you'd like to compile qf with clang with full optimizations:

CC=clang CFLAGS=-O4 LDFLAGS=-O4 make

You get the idea.

Removing qf is as simple as a make uninstall. Just remember to give the same prefix that you used during installation since the Makefile doesn't remember it.