Real-time filter current directory

[musjj]

ranger, nnn and lf allows you to filter the current directory.

yazi already allows you to perform a recursive search using fd, but sometimes you just want to search for files within the current directory in real-time (search results are shown on every keypress, instantly).

[sxyazi]

I think #104 is what you expected, it was just merged 20 hours ago, you can build from source to experience it in advance!

[musjj]

Thank you, it seems pretty close to what I want! But it'd be nice if it can also narrow down the search results, similar to / within the ? help menu.

[sxyazi]

But it'd be nice if it can also narrow down the search results, similar to / within the ? help menu.

This seems to be a duplication of the search (note, not find) feature.

It searches for specific files and only displays matches. What you might be looking for is a feature to search within the current directory without recursion. I have plans to add this, but currently don't have enough time, of course, PR welcome.

[musjj]

Hmm, I'm not really sure if this should be a part of of a search option. A real-time filter have to update for every key-stroke, so wouldn't it be a bit slow since search needs to spawn fd every time? I feel that find is a better fit for this feature.

[sxyazi]

This is a challenge for large directories IMO, because it involves matching all files in the entire directory with every keystroke and then relaying out the Vec, which requires a lot of memory movement.

The current implementation of "Find" keeps the file list read-only and only checks and jumps to the first matching item. "Search" seems more suitable for such scenarios, even though it's not triggered with every keystroke.

[musjj]

How does fzf handle it? fzf feels pretty fast for me. There's also https://github.com/lotabout/skim, a fzf alternative written in Rust that provides a library.

[sxyazi]

It seems like fzf may use multi-threading to speed up matching -- I'm not very familiar with the specific details of fzf. However, Yazi has already integrated fzf, so you can see if it meets your needs.

Also, are there any other terminal file managers that have smoothly implemented this feature? I could use that as a reference. I've previously tried ranger's filtering feature, but it performed poorly with large directories (100,000 files) and was frustratingly slow.

[musjj]

nnn and lf implements this feature. With nnn you can just use the / command. For lf, put set incfilter in ~/.config/lf/lfrc and run the :filter command. From my experience, the speed is pretty acceptable.

[sxyazi]

Okay, add it to the Feature Request and find time to implement it

[sxyazi]

Added, closing this issue in favor of the Feature Requests list

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[sxyazi]

Hey @musjj, your feature request of "Filter files in real-time" has been implemented in #454 by @Rolv-Apneseth.