Search syntax #

Sometimes fuzzy matching is not enough. fzf implements its own simple search syntax to augment fuzzy matching.

Multiple search terms #

You can type in multiple search terms delimited by spaces. For example, fzf sees ^music .mp3$ sbtrkt !fire as four separate search terms.

Match types #

Token	Match type	Description
`sbtrkt`	fuzzy-match	Items that include `sbtrkt` characters in that order
`'wild`	exact-match (quoted)	Items that include `wild`
`'wild'`	exact-boundary-match (quoted both ends)	Items that include `wild` at word boundaries
`^music`	prefix-exact-match	Items that start with `music`
`.mp3$`	suffix-exact-match	Items that end with `.mp3`
`!fire`	inverse-exact-match	Items that do not include `fire`
`!^music`	inverse-prefix-exact-match	Items that do not start with `music`
`!.mp3$`	inverse-suffix-exact-match	Items that do not end with `.mp3`

Exact matching #

If you don’t prefer fuzzy matching and do not wish to “quote” every word, start fzf with -e or --exact option. Note that when --exact is set, '-prefix “unquotes” the term.

OR operator #

A single bar character term acts as an OR operator. For example, the following query matches entries that start with core and end with either go, rb, or py.

^core go$ | rb$ | py$

How to get better results #

A common mistake is to type unnecessary spaces. You may type git add to search for git add something. But if you do so, fzf sees it as two separate terms and process them separately, so it will match add ... git which is not what you want.

# fzf picks up both
fzf -q 'git add' << EOF
add things to git
git add something
EOF

So most of the time, you’ll get better results by typing less.

gitadd is better than git add; add git will be filtered out.
gadd should work well too.
Or gas. fzf gives big bonus scores to the matching characters at word boundaries so acronym queries like this work surprisingly well.