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.
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)"
}
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.