rlselect

rlselect allows you to select a line interactively by searching. It works by reading input from stdin and printing the selected line to stdout. You can therefore use it to search anything, and it is up to you what to do with the selected line.

• Source code

  • Public version: https://github.com/rickardlindberg/rlselect

  • My current version: https://github.com/rickardlindberg/dotfiles/blob/master/bin/rlselect

• Resources

  • Problem with TIOCSTI: https://github.com/dvorka/hstr/issues/478#issuecomment-2597458248

  • Related blog posts: #rlselect

Install

$ ln -s "$(pwd)/rlselect.py" ~/bin/rlselect
$ ln -s "$(pwd)/rlselect_history.sh" ~/bin/rlselect-history

Shortcuts

Shortcut | Meaning
---------|------------------------------------------
BS       | Erase last typed character.
CTRL+W   | Erase last typed word.
CTRL+N   | Move to the next match.
CTRL+P   | Move to the previous match.
ENTER    | Select the current.
TAB      | Select the current if `--tab` was given.
ESC      | Exit without selecting.
CTRL+C   | Exit without selecting.
CTRL+G   | Exit without selecting.

Default configuration

~/.rlselect.cfg

[theme]
highlight_fg = RED
highlight_bg = BACKGROUND
selection_fg = WHITE
selection_bg = GREEN
gui_font_size = 11
gui_size = 900, 648

[rgb]
BACKGROUND = 253, 246, 227
FOREGROUND = 101, 123, 131
BLACK = 7, 54, 66
BLUE = 38, 139, 210
CYAN = 42, 161, 152
GREEN = 133, 153, 0
MAGENTA = 211, 54, 130
RED = 220, 50, 47
WHITE = 238, 232, 213
YELLOW = 181, 137, 0

Examples

Replace Ctrl-R in Bash (requires the extra rlselect-history):

In ~/.bashrc:

    if [[ $- =~ .*i.* ]]; then bind '"\C-r": "\C-a rlselect-history \C-j"'; fi

Open a file, buffer, or tag from vim/gvim:

In ~/.vimrc:

    function! Rlselect()
        if has("gui_running")
            let rlselect_command="rlselect --gui"
        else
            let rlselect_command="rlselect"
        endif
        let bufnrs = filter(range(1, bufnr("$")), 'buflisted(v:val)')
        let buffers = map(bufnrs, 'bufname(v:val)')
        let buffersout = join(buffers, "\n") . "\n"
        let selection = system("vim-find-select | " . rlselect_command, buffersout)
        if ! has("gui_running")
            redraw!
        endif
        if strpart(selection, 0, 1) == "b"
            exec ":b " . strpart(selection, 2)
        elseif strpart(selection, 0, 1) == "t"
            exec ":tj " . strpart(selection, 2)
        elseif strlen(selection) > 0
            exec ":e " . substitute(strpart(selection, 2), " ", "\\\\ ", "g")
        endif
    endfunction

    nmap <C-t> :call Rlselect()<CR>

In ~/bin/vim-find-select:

    #!/usr/bin/env bash

    while read buffer; do
        echo "b $buffer"
    done

    find-files | awk '{ print "  " $0 }'

    if [ -f tags ]; then
        cat tags | awk '{ print "t " $1 }'
    fi

In ~/bin/find-files

    #!/usr/bin/env bash

    find . \
        -type d -name .git        -prune -o \
        -type d -name .hg         -prune -o \
        -type d -name __pycache__ -prune -o \
        -type d -name venv        -prune -o \
        -type d -name .cache      -prune -o \
        -type f -name '.*swp'     -prune -o \
        -type f -name '*pyc'      -prune -o \
        -type f -print

Open a file in vim:

vim $(find | rlselect)

History

rlselect is inspired by hstr and selecta.

I was using hstr as a replacement for Ctrl-R in Bash. I found it excellent and wanted to use the same interface to select other things. For example to switch buffers in Vim. But hstr only allowed selecting Bash history. Then I found selecta. It could do almost what I wanted, but one thing it lacked was a GUI mode. I often use GVim, and then a proper console is not available.