Installing the command-line executable

Assuming you have Rust/Cargo installed, run this command in a terminal:

cargo install fe

It will make the fe command available in your PATH if you've allowed the PATH to be modified when installing Rust. cargo uninstall fe uninstalls.

Back to the crate overview.

Readme

Fe

Fe is a sophisticated, yet simple to use file listing utility. Use Fe to list files in a directory or to recursively find files by their names using a fuzzy pattern. Fe's speeds are comparable to find, and often times faster.

Installation

From cargo:

$ cargo install fe

From source:

Build with rust:

git clone https://github.com/btipling/fe.git
cd fe
cargo install

Homebrew and debian/aptitude packages with binaries are planned.

Usage:

$ fe --help
fe 1.0.0
Helps you find files with a fuzzy search.

USAGE:
    fe [FLAGS] [pattern]

FLAGS:
    -e, --exact          When you want an exact match. Probably best used with -n for searching
                         names.
    -h, --help           Prints help information
    -i, --insensitive    Sets the filename pattern to be case insensitive
    -n, --name           Search name and extension only.
    -p, --plain          Don't print colors.
    -r, --regex          Use a regular expression instead of a fuzzy search.
    -V, --version        Prints version information
    -v, --verbose        Print additional information during search. Use -vv for extra verbose debug
                         information.

ARGS:
    <pattern>    Sets the optional pattern to search for, if omitted it shows the files in the
                 current directory. Patterns that end with a / are treated as literal paths and
                 will result in a directory listing, not a search.

$ fe PatchSyntax
platform/vcs-api/src/com/intellij/openapi/diff/impl/patch/PatchSyntaxException.java

It respects .gitignores and is more ergonomic than using find when you just want to find a file:

$ time fe gulp
gulpfile.js
        0.00 real         0.00 user         0.00 sys

Fe can list directories and shows colors similar to ls:

fe supports colors

Compare the same search with find on the same code base:

$ time find . -name "gulpfile.js"
./gulpfile.js
./node_modules/escope/gulpfile.js
./node_modules/esrecurse/node_modules/estraverse/gulpfile.js
./node_modules/estraverse/gulpfile.js
./node_modules/gulp-stylus/examples/gulpfile.js
./node_modules/macaddress/gulpfile.js
        0.55 real         0.02 user         0.28 sys

It works with unicode:

$ fe 犬
lib/src/犬ハチ.java
java/java-impl/src/com/intellij/internal/diGraph/impl/犬ハチ.java

You can use turn off colors when you need to with -p:

~/p/r/fe (master) $ fe foo
foo.sh
~/p/r/fe (master) $ cat (fe -p foo)
#!/usr/bin/env bash

echo 'foo'

Fuzzy finding

Fe finds files by unicode alpha-numeric characters. It works much like IntelliJ's fuzzy file opener. Searches start matching at word start, and on match failure stop matching until the next word. Words are separated by UTF8 non-alphanumeric characters.

This finds main.rs because m matches the first word of main and rs matches the extension from the start.

~/p/r/fe (master) $ fe mrs
./src/main.rs

This matches src and main.

~/p/r/fe (master) $ fe srcmain
./src/main.rs

Here Ca matches the beginning of Cargo and tom matches the beginning of the toml extension.

~/p/r/fe (master) $ fe Catom
./Cargo.toml

This finds non-rust files because r matches the first character of rebase and the first character of sample.

~/p/r/fe (master) $ fe rs
./.git/hooks/pre-rebase.sample
./.git/hooks/pre-receive.sample
./src/find.rs
./src/main.rs

This finds all the files that match src.

~/p/r/fe (master) $ fe src
./src/cli.yaml
./src/find.rs
./src/main.rs
./src

This is a pretty specific match:

~/p/r/fe (master) $ fe workspace
./.idea/workspace.xml

Special thanks

A big thank you to @ajslater who provided valuable feedback and also to @brson who helped review the conditional compilation code!