PathPicker
Facebook PathPicker is a simple command line tool that solves the perpetual problem of selecting files out of bash output. PathPicker will:
- Parse all incoming lines for entries that look like files
- Present the piped input in a convenient selector UI
- Allow you to either:
- Edit the selected files in your favorite
$EDITOR
- Execute an arbitrary command with them
- Edit the selected files in your favorite
It is easiest to understand by watching a simple demo:
Examples
After installing PathPicker, using it is as easy as piping into fpp
. It takes
a wide variety of input -- try it with all the options below:
git status | fpp
hg status | fpp
git grep "FooBar" | fpp
grep -r "FooBar" . | fpp
git diff HEAD~1 --stat | fpp
arc inlines | fpp
find . -iname "*.js" | fpp
and anything else you can dream up!
Requirements
PathPicker should work with most Bash environments and requires Python >2.6 and <3.0.
ZSH is supported as well but won't have a few features like alias expansion in command line mode.
Installing PathPicker
Installing PathPicker is easiest with Homebrew for mac:
brew update
(to pull down the recipe since it is new)brew install fpp
However if you're on a system without Homebrew, it's still quite easy to install PathPicker since it's essentially just a bash script that calls some Python. These steps more-or-less outline the process:
cd /usr/local/ # or wherever you install apps
git clone git@github.com:facebook/PathPicker.git
cd PathPicker/
Here we make a symbolic link from the bash script in the repo
to /usr/local/bin/
which is assumed to be in the current
$PATH
ln -s ./fpp /usr/local/bin/fpp
fpp --help # should work!
Advanced Functionality
As mentioned above, PathPicker allows you to also execute arbitrary commands with the specified files.
Here is an exaple showing a git checkout
command executed against the selected files:
The selected files are appended to the command prefix to form the final command. If you need the files
in the middle of your command, you can use the $F
token instead, like:
cat $F | wc -l
How PathPicker works
PathPicker is a combination of a bash script and some small Python modules. It essentially has three steps:
- First in the bash script, it redirects all standardout in to a python module that parses and extracts out the filenames. This data is saved in a temporary file and the python script exits.
- Next, the bash script switches to terminal input mode and
another python module reads out the saved entries and presents them in a
selector UI built with
curses
. The user either selects a few files to edit or inputs a command to execute. - Lastly, the python script outputs a command to a bash file that is later executed by the original bash script.
It's not the most elegant architecture in the world but (in our opinion) provides a lot of utility.
Join the PathPicker community
See the CONTRIBUTING file for how to help out.
License
PathPicker is BSD-licensed. We also provide an additional patent grant.