dcd : Deep fuzzy cd

When you want to cd to a deep directory, using br is fast and easy enough:

But when you frequently go to a few specific places, you may prefer a shortcut.

As broot can be driven by commands, you can define this function:

# deep fuzzy cd
function dcd {
    br --only-folders --cmd "$1 :cd"
}

(paste this for example in your .bashrc)

This is the "I'm feeling lucky" of broot, you can use it to directly jump to directories you know, when you don't need the interactive search of br.

Example:

dcd ruleset

focus a new directory but keep the current filter

When you hit enter on a directory, it's focused and the filter is reset.

If you want to keep the filter, for example to search deeper, you may use :focus instead.

Similarly, :back keeps can be used in place of esc to keep the filter when going to the previous state.

Going from a fixed search to an exact one

Let's assume you type too to search for some files. You might have got too many matches including some where the letters aren't consecutive.

You may switch to an exact search by just adding /, which changes the fuzzy pattern to a regular expression.

Or if you realize you want to match tOo too, then you make it case insensitive by adding an i: too/i.

Run an script or program from broot

If your system is normally configured, just doing alt-enter on an executable will close broot and executes the file.

Open files without a windowing system

If you're on a server linux without xdg-open or equivalent, you may want to redefine the way broot open files on enter.

You may use such configuration:

[[verbs]]
invocation = "edit"
key = "enter"
execution = "$EDITOR {file}"

Git Status

If you want to start navigating with a view of the files which changed, you may do

br -gc :gs

Then just hitting the esc key will show you the normal unfiltered broot view.

(note: this isn't equivalent to git status. Most notably, removed files aren't displayed)