Tips

Useful Tips

✔️ Search files and select one file path at one step

The following function will search files matching given patterns and let you choose a file and copy its path to the system clipboard. The job of searching files will be done with lf command so the function accepts arguments as the exact same way as lf does.

_f() {
    select a in "QUIT!" $( lf $* ); do
        [ "$a" = "QUIT!" ] && break;
        echo -n "$a" | _pbcopy; ### @@@ Customization Point!
        echo "$a"; break;
    done;
};

A usage example is as follows:

    $ _f /usr/share/zoneinfo Sing --

    1) QUIT!
    2) /usr/share/zoneinfo/Asia/Singapore
    3) /usr/share/zoneinfo/Singapore
    #?

What differs to lf is that the function prints each of paths found and let you interactively select which path you want. And furthermore, it will copy the path you choose to the system clipboard. ( If your system already has proper tools for that. Refer to this for further discussion. )

See the code marked with @@@ Customization Point! in the function. What it does is copying the path the user has selected into the system clipboard. But, where has _pbcopy thing come from? Actually when you load lf.sh script into your shell session by . lf.sh or source lf.sh command, these helper shell functions _pbcopy or _pbpaste will also be loaded into your shell session and you can use them freely.

If you are an OS X user, you may be familiar with pbcopy or pbpaste shell commands. These shell functions do the same job as pbcopy/pbpaste of OS X do. ( Those shell functions will be available on other systems like Linux or Cygwin, too )

You can compress the function above into a more concise Bash alias like so:

    alias sf='_f() { select a in "QUIT!" $( lf $* ); do [ "$a" = "QUIT!" ] && break; echo -n "$a" | _pbcopy; echo "$a"; break; done; }; _f'

Copy and paste that alias to your .bashrc and reload it. Then it's ready for your service!

    $ sf /usr/share/zoneinfo Sing --

    1) QUIT!
    2) /usr/share/zoneinfo/Asia/Singapore
    3) /usr/share/zoneinfo/Singapore
    #?

Also you can change that customization point for whatever needs. Say, you want to find files from a simple pattern (at which lf is really good) and select a file among them and edit that file right away. Just replace that customization point with the following code.

    vim "$a"

Again, you can define an alias for that task like so:

    alias sv='_f() { select a in "QUIT!" $( lf $* ); do [ "$a" = "QUIT!" ] && break; vim "$a"; break; done; }; _f'

✔️ Find the Current Time of Specific Timezone

The idea is similar. But, we use lfi instead of lf because case insensitive pattern matching is more useful in this case.

    alias whattime='_f() { select a in "QUIT!" $( cd /usr/share/zoneinfo; lfi . $* -- ); do [ "$a" = "QUIT!" ] && break; TZ="$a" date "+DATE: %y/%m/%d%nTIME: %H:%M:%S"; break; done; }; _f'

For instance, when you want to find out what time it is in New York city, then use.

    $ whattime new y
    1) QUIT!
    2) America/New_York
    #? 2
    DATE: 17/06/15
    TIME: 17:21:00

You don't have to remember the exact name of the target timezone thanks to lfi. Typing new y (and case insensitive) is enough instead of typing America/New_York.

One downside is you may not be able to directly find out the current time in your specific favorite city because /usr/share/zoneinfo doesn't contain every major city in the world. Say, you want to directly know the current time in San Francisco, CA, but you can't. So sad.

    $ whattime san fran
    1) QUIT!
    #? 1

You can use whattime los (for America/Los_Angeles) instead.

✔️ Edit All Files Found by lf or lfi

By simply typing lfs or lff, you can print out all the file paths found by the previous call of lf or lfi.

And using vim -p [files ...], you can load multiple files into Vim tab pages at once.

e.g)

    $ lf tools/ data .sh
    tools/data-management/cvzdata-console.sh
    tools/data-management/cvzdata2csv.sh
    tools/data-management/export-data.sh
    tools/data-management/import-data.sh

    $ vim -p $( lfs )
    4 files to edit

Or, more simply, vim -p $( lf tools/ data .sh ) will do the same job, but you may want to first check if the found files by lf are exactly what you need because mostly you wouldn't want to load any of irrelevant files into the editing session.

✔️ Search Files with a Long Extension

Most common pattern of using lf or lfi is specifying a file extension at the end like lf src .java. But some files may have a long file extension and you may feel stupid to type all that long extension. You can use -- notation in that case.

For instance, when you want to find out all .properties files through src folder, you may do like so:

    $ lf src .properties

Or more cleverly, you may do the same job with:

    $ lf src .pro --

Of course, it may depend on the situation. Say, the folder may contain .prop files as well as .properties files and then lf will also return those irrelevant files. But a few of .prop files may not bother you, or even if there are too many of them, you can type just a little more like lf src .prope -- and that's it.