Install zf with Homebrew, Nix

Project links

• Homepage

Commands and aliases

• zf

Project history

Nathan Craddock describes zf as coming from frustration with existing fuzzy finders ranking the intended file below path matches. In 2021 he began experimenting with filename-prioritized matching, later separating the ranking idea from a Neovim file picker so it could be used as a standalone command and library.

How it is used

zf reads newline-separated candidates from stdin and writes selected candidates to stdout, so it fits the same shell slot as tools like fzf. Its key behavior is ranking filename matches ahead of full-path matches, adding strict path matching when the query contains path separators, and supporting whitespace-separated query tokens for narrowing results.

Why package nerds care

zf matters in package catalogs as a deliberately narrower fuzzy finder: it does not try to out-feature fzf, but packages one ranking opinion that is useful enough to be reused in editors, shell pipelines, and libraries.

Timeline

• 2021: The author starts experimenting with filename-prioritized fuzzy matching after repeated file-search ranking misses.
• 2023-03-17: The author publishes a design write-up explaining zf, strict path matching, and the standalone tool/library direction.

Related projects

• fzf and fzy are the comparison points used in the author write-up.
• telescope-zf-native.nvim reuses the zf ranking idea inside Neovim Telescope.
• nvim-find was an earlier Neovim file finder by the same author that helped motivate extracting the algorithm.

Sources

• https://github.com/natecraddock/nvim-find
• https://github.com/natecraddock/telescope-zf-native.nvim
• https://github.com/natecraddock/zf
• https://nathancraddock.com/blog/a-different-approach-to-fuzzy-finding/