🚀 fzf-live-repl 🚀

This hacky one-liner turns your fzf into a live REPL. There is not much to explain, see it for yourself. Please note that I will be adding more examples as I come up with them. You are also welcome to contribute them yourself by creating an issue or a pull request.

Featured in my blog post

See also: fzf-launch - open any file directly from command line with a command of your choice

How?

By abusing the --preview flag of fzf. It allows an arbitrary command to be executed as the query changes. The {q} is then being substituted by your typed query. After exiting fzf by pressing enter, the --print-query flag ensures that the typed query will be printed to stdout.

WARNING!

Always be careful what you set the --preview flag to! Imagine setting rm -rf and then typing * as the query string!. I take no responsibility if you break anything!

ONLY USE THIS FOR COMMANDS WHICH ARE READ-ONLY!

ALWAYS KNOW WHAT YOU'RE TYPING/PASTING!

Examples

Live awk preview

$ echo '' | fzf --print-query --preview 'echo "a\nb\nc\nd" | awk {q}'

Peek into contents of a directory

$ echo '' | fzf --preview 'ls {q}'

Execute a Ruby script

$ echo '' | fzf --print-query --preview 'ruby -e {q}'

Instantly browse manpages (and find the relevant flag as you type the command - TODO)

$ echo '' | fzf --preview 'man {q}'

Execute a Python script

$ echo '' | fzf --print-query --preview 'python -c {q}'