Search Finder

[Nathan Craddock]

Alongside files and buffers, one more finder would be nice to have before the first official release: a string search (ripgrep). There are two main uses for string finders:

1. Search and replace throughout a project
2. Finding a string in a file and then opening at that point

Though this could be easily done with two keybind and two finders, I wanted to simplify and make it as straightforward as possible. The current plan:

• When the finder first opens no line is highlighted.
• Entering a search query populates results from ripgrep as a preview.
• If enter is pressed then the quickfix/locallist is filled with results and opened. This makes it easy to do a find and replace or do other things with the search results. This is the first main use of a search finder.
• If a selection is made (ctrl-j for example) then a preview window opens and the finder becomes useful for the second main use of finders.
• In this mode, selection with enter will open the selected result in the last window (or split/tab based on keyboard shortcut). The quickfix/location list is still populated, but not shown by default.

This hopefully creates a frictionless workflow for both find and replace, and just general project-wide search.

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Note that this does add a preview window. In my original thoughts for nvim-find I was focused on file finding and I still believe a file finder does not need a buffer preview. But search and replace is one case where I do think a preview is beneficial.