`fd` For Find Files
One of the concepts I want to emphasize is the advantage of using small “composable” Unix utilities. To this end, I use rg for all kinds of operations that search or list files. One advantage of this approach is that convenient rules setup in rg, e.g., ignoring .git directories and files in .gitignore, then propagate over every file and search operation I perform.
But something that’s always bothered me is since rg doesn’t support finding directories (understandably), I lose rg semantics when searching for directories, and instead get decades old find semantics, which don’t do smart things like ignoring things that probably should be ignored.
So I was delighted when I followed the ripgrep GitHub issue to the fzf README to fd. A utility that does exactly what I’m looking for, find directories while replicating the smart take on semantics used by rg (and other modern unix utilities).
Here’s an example of my favorite use of this, replacing the built-in fzf zsh widget’s FZF_ALT_C_COMMAND, which enables a key command to fuzzy filter a directory to cd to recursively.
