Niffler

"These're nifflers," said Hagrid, when the class had gathered around. "Yeh find 'em down mines mostly. They like sparkly stuff...useful little treasure detectors."

Nifflers are fluffy, mole-like creatures that like to dig for treasure. Vim-Niffler, on the other hand, is a fast, lightweight, fuzzy, file finder for Vim and is heavily inspired by FZF.

I made Vim-Niffler because all the other fuzzy file finders I tried were either too slow without caching (Unite, CtrlP), too complicated (Unite), had a hideous codebase (CtrlP), or didn't support opening the fuzzy finder in the current window (FZF).

If I had known about g:ctrlp_user_command="ag %s" and g:ctrlp_use_caching=0 I probably would have never made Niffler, but now that I have it's nice to have a small, legible codebase that makes adding new features/changing core functionality a breeze.

Usage

Niffler differs from other fuzzy file finders in that it doesn't perform a fuzzy search by default. Instead it searches for an exact match of the text typed but you can insert a "fuzzy character" to specify which part of the query should match any string of characters. This works exactly like the "*" wildcard character in most shells:

• izzbu will match fizzbuzz but not fizzbazbuzz
• izz*bu will match fizzbuzz and fizzbazbuzz

The default fuzzy char is * but can be changed with g:niffler_fuzzy_char

The beginning and end of the query are fuzzy by default but you can use ^ and $ to specify an exact match at either end:

• ^fizz will match fizzbazbuzz but not buzzfizzbaz
• buzz$ will match fizzbazbuzz but not bazbuzzfizz

Specify a command to be run on the open file by appending a ":" to the end of the search query.

• iz*buz:45 will open a file fizzbazbuzz and jump to line 45
• iz*buz:diffthis will open a file fizzbazbuzz and add the file to the diff windows

Niffler has several different modes:

Command	Description
Niffler	Fuzzy file search
NifflerMRU	Fuzzy file search on MRU cache
NifflerBuffer	Fuzzy file search on buffer list
NifflerTags	Fuzzy tag search on ctags list
NifflerTselect	Fuzzy tag search on matching tags
NifflerTjump	Fuzzy tag search on matching tags, jump directly if only one match

The Niffler command takes any number of optional arguments and has the following structure:

Niffler [-vcs] [DIRECTORY]

• -vcs: search from git root directory of current file
• Directory to search from

Ctags Filtering

• The NifflerTags command can optionally take a % as argument to only search for tags in the current file.

• The NifflerTselect command can be used to replace the built-in :tselect command and filter a list of matching tags.

  • nnoremap <silent> g] :NifflerTselect<CR>

• The NifflerTjump command can similarly be used to replace the built-in :tjump command. The command will jump directly to a tag if there is only one match and otherwise will present a list of matching tags to filter

  • nnoremap <silent> g<C-]> :NifflerTjump<CR>

Key Mappings

Key	Action
<C-K>, <C-P>, <Up>	Move up one line in the candidate list
<C-J>, <C-N>, <Down>	Move down one line in the candidate list
<C-A>	Scroll to the beginning of the line
<C-E>	Scroll to the end of the line
<C-R>	Insert the contents of a register
<C-X>, <Left>	Mark multiple selections for opening
<CR>, <Right>	Open selection in current window
<C-S>	Open selection in new horizontal split
<C-V>	Open selection in new vertical split
<C-T>	Open selection in new tab window
<Esc>, <C-[>, <C-C>	Quit Niffler

Configuration

• niffler#custom()
  • Create customized lists of candidates to filter through
• g:niffler_user_command
  • Custom file indexing command, use %s in place of the target directory
  • i.e. let g:niffler_user_command = 'ag %s -g ""'
• g:niffler_ignore_extensions
  • List of file extensions to exclude from Niffler results
  • Ignored when g:niffler_user_command is non-empty
• g:niffler_ignore_dirs
  • List of directories to exclude from Niffler results
  • Helpful for large directories that could slow Niffler down
  • Ignored when g:niffler_user_command is non-empty
• g:niffler_prompt
  • Prompt string for input
  • The placeholder %s is replaced with the prompt text (optional)
  • i.e. let g:niffler_prompt = '%s $ '
• g:niffler_marked_indicator
  • Indicator which is used to mark selected entries
  • i.e. let g:niffler_marked_indicator = 'x '

Requirements

Niffler currently requires the grep, cut, and sed utilities for full support. Niffler is not tested on Windows and its current level of support is unknown.

Installation

• Pathogen
  • cd ~/.vim/bundle && git clone https://github.com/pgdouyon/vim-niffler.git
• Vundle
  • Plugin 'pgdouyon/vim-niffler'
• NeoBundle
  • NeoBundle 'pgdouyon/vim-niffler'
• Vim-Plug
  • Plug 'pgdouyon/vim-niffler'
• Manual Install
  • Copy all the files into the appropriate directory under ~/.vim on *nix or $HOME/_vimfiles on Windows

License

Copyright (c) 2015 Pierre-Guy Douyon. Distributed under the MIT License.