Broot

A better way to navigate directories

Broot's Web Site

Get an overview of a directory, even a big one:

Notice the "unlisted"? That's what makes it usable where the old tree command would produce pages of output.

.gitignore files are properly dealt with to put unwanted files out of your way (you can ignore them though, see documentation).

Find a directory then cd to it:

This way, you can navigate to a directory with the minimum amount of keystrokes, even if you don't exactly remember where it is.

broot is fast and never blocks, even when you make it search a big slow disk (any keystroke interrupts the current search to start the next one).

Most useful keys for this:

• the letters of what you're looking for
• <enter> to select a directory (staying in broot)
• <esc> to get back to the previous state or clear your search
• <alt><enter> to get back to the shell having cd to the selected directory
• :q if you just want to quit (<esc> works too)

Never lose track of file hierarchy while you fuzzy search:

broot tries to select the most relevant file. You can still go from one match to another one using <tab> or arrow keys.

You may also search with a regular expression. To do this, add a / before or after the pattern.

Complex regular expression are possible, but you'll probably most often use a regex to do an "exact" search, or search an expression at the start or end of the filename.

For example, assuming you look for your one file whose name contains abc in a big directory, you may not see it immediately because of many fuzzy matches. In that case, just add a slash at the end to change you fuzzy search into an exact expression: abc/.

And if you look for a filename ending in abc then you may anchor the regex: abc$/.

See what takes space:

To toggle size display, type :s. Sizes are computed in the background, you don't have to wait for them when you navigate.

Apply a personal shortcut to a file:

Just find the file you want to edit with a few keystrokes, type :e, then <enter> (you should define your preferred editor, see documentation).

More...

See Broot's web site for instructions regarding installation and usage.