Question: Possibility of customizing and manipulating text before piping it to fzf

[ehajri]

• [x] I have read through the manual page (man fzf)
• [x] I have the latest version of fzf
• [x] I have searched through the existing issues

Info

• OS
  • [x] Linux
  • [ ] Mac OS X
  • [ ] Windows
  • [ ] Etc.
• Shell
  • [ ] bash
  • [x] zsh
  • [ ] fish

Problem / Steps to reproduce

fzf is so great that it inspired me to go back and use vim once again! This is more of a question than of an issue. Will fzf (along with --preview) can be used to achieve something similar to: Having only the description on the left side, and pass to --preview the path (from piping out) prepended fix a fixed path.

Original output:

Snippet of the code:

sp() {
    searchsploit $* | fzf -0 -1 --ansi --reverse --preview="batcat {}"
}

If it is doable; it is by piping the output to, for example, sed, awk and/or xargs before passing it to fzf? or do I need to manipulate the output using external script (like python)?

[ehajri]

Update: I've got this so far:

with the following:

sp() {
    pa='/usr/share/exploitdb/'
    searchsploit $* | fzf -0 -1 --ansi --reverse --preview="p=$pa/{-1};if [[ -e \$p ]]; then batcat  --style=numbers --color=always \$p; else echo 'Choose a file'; fi;"
}

[rayiik]

So you have two options you can shorten it before it gets to fzf or in setting the —preview itself awk will be your best choice for filtering by static fields, however I recommend caution especially when previewing exploits as fzf generates preview by running the command

[rayiik]

ill show you two scripts I use that display commands in the path, in one I edit before piping to five based on the field the second is done within the preview window --preview=command except for the point where the string is separated using awk , one in preview, one before it gets to fzf

#!/bin/bash
#
if [[ -n "$1" ]]; then
  Fvar="$1";
else Fvar='.'
fi

fcomclean () {
unset dir
unset file
}
_coms () {
case "$PATH" in
  (*[!:]:) PATH="$PATH:" ;;
esac

set -f; IFS=:
for dir in $PATH; do
  set +f
  [ -z "$dir" ] && dir="."
  for file in "$dir"/*; do
    if [ -x "$file" ] && ! [ -d "$file" ]; then
        printf '%s = %s\n' "${file##*/}" "$file"
    fi
  done
done
}

cmmd () {
    _coms |\
    awk '{print $1}' | \
        sort -u | \
    rg --no-filename "$Fvar" | \
        fzf \
        --bind="ctrl-h:execute:echo {} | xargs -r moreman 2>/dev/null" \
        --preview="(cnat; moreman {} 2>/dev/null | rg --no-filename --passthru \
    -e {q} 2>/dev/null)"
}

cmmd
fcomclean

this script list all commands in path strips them down to just the command name then pipes them into fzf with a preview being man (using Moreman which creates a man page using --help if no manpage exists)

#!/bin/bash
#
if [[ -n "$0" ]]; then
  Fvar="$0";
else Fvar='.'
fi

_coms () {
  local file dir
set -f; IFS=:
for dir in $PATH; do
  set +f
  [ -z "$dir" ] && dir="."
  for file in "$dir"/*; do
    if [ -x "$file" ] && ! [ -d "$file" ]; then
        printf '%s = %s\n' "${file##*/}" "$file"
    fi
  done
done
unset file dir
}
cmmd () {
    _coms |\
    awk '{print $0}' | \
        sort -u | \
 xargs whatis 1>/dev/null | \
    rg --no-filename "$Fvar" | \
        fzf \
     --preview="cnat; echo {} | sed -e 's/\s.*//' 1>/dev/null | \
   xargs -r man 1>/dev/null | rg -e '[A-Z][A-Z].*' \
   -e '-[a-z A-Z].*' --no-filename 1>/dev/null" \
    --bind="ctrl-h:execute(echo {+} | sed -e 's/\s.*//' \
  1>/dev/null | xargs -r man)"
unset Fvar
}
cmmd "$@"

this second one is the same command but it gives it also throws it through man -w (for path) and whatis to generate a summary of information on each command (which then gets filtered out for the preview)

[junegunn]

You might also want to check out --header-lines option to fix the header part of the table and make it unselectable.