TUI multiline fuzzy document finder
Think interactive grep for text files, PDFs, DOCXs, etc, but word/token based instead of regex and line based, so you can search across lines easily.
Docfd aims to provide good UX via integration with common text editors and PDF viewers, so you can jump directly to a search result with a single key press.
Navigating repo:
Quick search with non-interactive mode:
Navigating PDF and opening it to the closest location to the selected search result via PDF viewer integration:
-
Multithreaded indexing and searching
-
Multiline fuzzy search of multiple files or a single file
-
Swap between multi-file view and single file view on the fly
-
Content view pane that shows the snippet surrounding the search result selected
-
Text editor and PDF viewer integration
Docfd uses the text editor specified by $VISUAL
(this is checked first) or $EDITOR
.
Docfd opens the file at first line of search result for the following editors:
nano
nvim
/vim
/vi
kak
hx
emacs
micro
jed
/xjed
Docfd guesses the default PDF viewer based on the output
of xdg-mime query default application/pdf
,
and invokes the viewer either directly or via flatpak
depending on where the desktop file can be first found
in the list of directories specified by $XDG_DATA_DIRS
.
Docfd opens the file at first page of the search result and starts a text search of the most unique word of the matched phrase within the same page for the following viewers:
- okular
- evince
- xreader
- atril
Docfd opens the file at first page of the search result for the following viewers:
- mupdf
Statically linked binaries are available via GitHub releases.
Docfd is also packaged on:
- opam
- AUR (as
docfd-bin
) by kseistrup - Nix (as
docfd
) by chewblacka
Notes for packagers: Outside of the OCaml toolchain for building (if you are packaging from source), Docfd also requires the following external tools at run time for full functionality:
pdftotext
frompoppler-utils
for PDF supportpandoc
for support of.epub
,.odt
,.docx
,.fb2
,.ipynb
,.html
, and.htm
filesfzf
for file selection menu
command | docfd
Docfd uses single file view when source of document is piped stdin.
No paths should be supplied as arguments in this case. If any paths are specified, then stdin is ignored.
docfd [PATH]...
The list of paths can contain directories.
Each directory in the list is scanned recursively for
files with the following extensions by default:
.txt
,
.md
,
.pdf
,
.epub
,
.odt
,
.docx
,
.fb2
,
.ipynb
,
.html
,
.htm
.
You can change the file extensions to use via --exts
,
or add onto the list of extensions via --add-exts
.
If the list PATH
s is empty,
then Docfd defaults to scanning the
current directory .
.
If any of the file ends with .pdf
, then pdftotext
is required to continue.
If any of the file ends with extension that is supported
via pandoc
, then pandoc
is required to continue.
If exactly one file is specified in the list of paths, then Docfd uses single file view. Otherwise, Docfd uses multi-file view.
docfd [PATH]... ?
The ?
can be in any position in the path list.
If any of the path is ?
, then file selection
of the discovered files
via fzf
is invoked.
docfd [PATH]... --paths-from paths.txt
The final list of paths used is then the concatenation
of PATH
s and paths listed in paths.txt
, which
has one path per line.
The list PATH
s does not default to .
when
--paths-from
is used.
The search field takes a search expression as input. A search expression is one of:
- Search phrase, e.g.
fuzzy search
?expression
(optional)(expression)
expression | expression
(or), e.g.go ( left | right )
To use literal ?
, (
, )
or |
, a backslash (\
) needs to be placed in front
of the character.
Search is asynchronous, specifically:
- Editing of search field is not blocked by search progress
- Updating/clearing the search field cancels the current search and starts a new search immediately
For a phrase with optional operator, such as ?word0 word1 ...
,
the first word is grouped implicitly,
i.e. it is treated as (?word0) word1 ...
.
Document content and user input in the search field are tokenized/segmented in the same way, based on:
- Contiguous alphanumeric characters
- Individual symbols
- Individual UTF-8 characters
- Spaces
A search phrase is a list of said tokens.
Search procedure is a DFS through the document index, where the search range for a word is fixed to a configured range surrounding the previous word (when applicable).
A token in the index matches a token in the search phrase if they fall into one of the following cases:
- They are a case-insensitive exact match
- They are a case-insensitive substring match (token in search phrase being the substring)
- They are within the configured case-insensitive edit distance threshold
Search results are then ranked using a heuristic.
Navigation mode
- Switch to search mode
/
- Clear search field
x
- Exit Docfd
Esc
,Ctrl+C
orCtrl+Q
- Print selected search result to stderr
p
- Print path of selected document to stderr
Shift
+P
Search mode
- Search field is active in this mode
Enter
to confirm search expression and exit search mode
The default TUI is divided into four sections:
- Left is the list of documents which satisfy the search expression
- Top right is the content view of the document which tracks the search result selected
- Bottom right is the ranked search result list
- Bottom pane consists of:
- Status bar
- Key binding info
- Search bar
Search bar consists of the search status indicator and the search field. The search status indicator shows one of the following values:
OK
- Docfd is idle/search is done
...
- Docfd is still searching
ERR
- Docfd failed to parse the search expression in the search field
Docfd operates in modes, the initial mode is navigation mode.
Navigation mode
- Scroll down the document list
j
- Down arrow
- Page down
- Scroll down with mouse wheel when hovering above the area
- Scroll up the document list
k
- Up arrow
- Page up
- Scroll up with mouse wheel when hovering above the area
- Scroll down the search result list
Shift
+J
Shift
+Down arrowShift
+Page down- Scroll down with mouse wheel when hovering above the area
- Scroll up the document list
Shift
+K
Shift
+Up arrowShift
+Page up- Scroll up with mouse wheel when hovering above the area
- Open document
Enter
- Docfd tries to use
$VISUAL
first, if that fails then Docfd tries$EDITOR
- Docfd tries to use
- Switch to single file view
Tab
If the specified path to Docfd is not a directory, then single file view is used.
In this view, the TUI is divided into only three sections:
- Top is content view
- Middle is ranked search result list
- Bottom pane is the same as the one displayed in multi-file view, but with different key binding info
The controls are simplified in single file view,
namely Shift
is optional for scrolling through search result list.
Navigation mode
- Scroll down the search result list
j
- Down arrow
- Page down
Shift
+J
Shift
+Down arrowShift
+Page down- Scroll down with mouse wheel when hovering above the area
- Scroll up the document list
k
- Up arrow
- Page up
Shift
+K
Shift
+Up arrowShift
+Page up- Scroll up with mouse wheel when hovering above the area
- Open document
Enter
- Docfd tries to use
$VISUAL
first, if that fails then Docfd tries$EDITOR
- Docfd tries to use
- Switch to multi-file view
Tab
-
File auto-reloading is not supported for PDF files, as PDF viewers are invoked in the background via shell. It is possible to support this properly in the ways listed below, but requires a lot of engineering for potentially very little gain:
-
Docfd waits for PDF viewer to terminate fully before resuming, but this prohibits viewing multiple search results simultaneously in different PDF viewer instances.
-
Docfd manages the launched PDF viewers completely, but these viewers are closed when Docfd terminates.
-
Docfd invokes the PDF viewers via shell so they stay open when Docfd terminates. Docfd instead periodically checks if they are still running via the PDF viewers' process IDs, but this requires handling forks.
-
Outside of tracking whether the PDF viewer instances interacting with the files are still running, Docfd also needs to set up file update handling either via
inotify
or via checking file modification times periodically.
-
- Demo gifs and some screenshots are made using vhs.
- ripgrep-all for text extraction software choices