Directory navigation with fzf #

ALT-C binding allows you to easily move to a subdirectory. But for directories not under the current directory, we need a different approach. Fuzzy completion helps (e.g. cd ../../foo/**<TAB>), but that’s still a lot of typing.

You definitely need a program that keeps track of the directories you visit frequently and allows you to jump between them quickly. It will immensly boost your productivity, because you’ll be switching between a small number of directories most of the time.

z #

I’ve been using the good old z. There are alternatives like autojump and zoxide, but I prefer the simplicity of z and the fact that it’s just a small shell script file so I can easily read and change if needed. Other projects claim to be faster, but performance is rarely an issue and you won’t really notice the difference.

Installation #

Installing z is easy. You can use your package manager to install it

brew install z

or download the script file.

curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rupa/z/master/z.sh -o ~/.z.sh

Then add a line to your shell configuration file to source the script.

# If installed via Homebrew
echo ". /opt/homebrew/etc/profile.d/z.sh" >> ~/.bashrc

# If downloaded manually
echo ". ~/.z.sh" >> ~/.bashrc

Usage #

Once set up, z will keep track of the directories you visit and sort them by “frecency” (frequency + recency). You can jump to the most “relevant” directory matching the given string.

z foo

Or you can list the directories by just typing z

z

Integration with fzf #

Now that we have a list of relevant directories you visit all the time, it’s time to integrate it with fzf.

z actually is an alias to _z function. Let’s unalias it first to create our own z function that integrates with fzf.

unalias z 2> /dev/null

Then we define our z function like so:

z() {
  local dir=$(
    _z 2>&1 |
    fzf --height 40% --layout reverse --info inline \
        --nth 2.. --tac --no-sort --query "$*" \
        --bind 'enter:become:echo {2..}'
  ) && cd "$dir"
}

• _z prints the list to the standard error, so we redirect it to the standard output (2>&1).
• --height 40% --layout reverse --info inline
  • These options just customize the layout and don’t affect the result, so feel free to experiment with other options. fzf Theme Generator is a great place to explore different options.
• --nth 2.. limits the search scope to exclude the first score column.
• _z lists the entries in the ascending order of the score, so we use --tac to make the most relevant entry appear first.
• Because the list is already sorted, we use --no-sort.
• --query "$*" sets the initial query to the arguments passed to the function.
• By default, when you press enter, fzf prints the entire line to the standard output. But we only want the directory name without the score at the front, so we use --bind 'enter:become:echo {2..}' to change the behavior.
  • We use {2..} instead of {2} in case the directory name contains spaces.

zoxide #

zoxide is an alternative to z. It provides fzf integration out of the box as zi (zoxide interactive). However, the options to fzf are not customizable and fuzzy matching is disabled, so you might want to define your own function like the one above. We simply replace _z 2>&1 with zoxide query --list --score, and that’s all it takes.

z() {
  local dir=$(
    zoxide query --list --score |
    fzf --height 40% --layout reverse --info inline \
        --nth 2.. --tac --no-sort --query "$*" \
        --bind 'enter:become:echo {2..}'
  ) && cd "$dir"
}