Show HN: Nav – A terminal navigator for interactive `ls` workflows • Hacker News Board

Re: Show HN: Nav – A terminal navigator for interactive `ls` workflows

#21

Post by JNRowe » Thu, Sep 28, 2023, 2:48 AM UTC

renewiltord wrote: post #12

djbusby wrote: post #2

Any thoughts on Midnight Commander? https://midnight-commander.org/

It can edit zip files and stuff. I actually had no idea it was a Miguel de Icaza project. Quite a prolific fellow.

The beauty of that feature is the system to implement it - extfs(EXTernal virtual File System) - is built with simple scripts, so you can add your own little tools to make other things navigable beyond the ~40 that come bundled.

There is a simple introduction in /usr/lib/mc/extfs.d/README, or https://github.com/MidnightCommander/mc/blob/master/src/vfs/... .

Re: Show HN: Nav – A terminal navigator for interactive `ls` workflows

#22

Post by blooalien » Thu, Sep 28, 2023, 4:46 AM UTC

dankco wrote: post #4

djbusby wrote: post #2

Any thoughts on Midnight Commander? https://midnight-commander.org/

I have to admit that I had not come across midnight-commander. It certainly looks interesting and I'll be giving it a spin. Thanks for pointing me in its direction! I do intend to expand nav's feature set to come close to an `ls` replacement, at least for the most common workflows, whereas midnight-commander and other similar tools are perhaps closer to being (or are) file managers. I'm also hopeful that by using the…

Midnight Commander also includes a really decent little text editor (mcedit) with syntax highlighting for a decent range of text file formats.

Re: Show HN: Nav – A terminal navigator for interactive `ls` workflows

#23

Post by jraph » Thu, Sep 28, 2023, 6:37 AM UTC

Seems nice :-)

For this part specifically:

> the all-too-familiar cycle of `ls` to view a directory, followed by `cd`, then `ls`, and repeat

I use (oh-my-)zsh for this. Tab would autocomplete (with some basic support for "fuzzy search" - case insensitive, part for the file works). If there are several options it displays them and they can be selected. When completed, another tab press displays the folder content. For some commands, it tries to show only relevant files. For cd, it won't complete with the name of a (non-folder) file.

This is very effective. I feel like one of my hands is missing when I don't have this, for instance when I'm using bash.

Re: Show HN: Nav – A terminal navigator for interactive `ls` workflows

#24

Post by shashurup » Thu, Sep 28, 2023, 8:38 AM UTC

Looks interesting.

Have you thought about implementing marks, so that you can select some files for further operations?

Re: Show HN: Nav – A terminal navigator for interactive `ls` workflows

#25

Post by dystroy » Thu, Sep 28, 2023, 8:55 AM UTC

dankco wrote: post #8

pxc wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also Broot, which is-- like OP's tool-- intended as an ls replacement rather than a full file manager: https://github.com/Canop/broot

Broot looks really nice. I love the tree-like output - `tree` is one of my favorite tools. Interactive tree is a great idea, makes me wish I had perhaps started there instead.

broot can be used to replace tree (i.e. be non interactive): https://dystroy.org/broot/tricks/#replace-tree

This is convenient when you don't want to browse or search, just want what tree does but without scrolling.

Re: Show HN: Nav – A terminal navigator for interactive `ls` workflows

#26

Post by taffit » Thu, Sep 28, 2023, 10:45 AM UTC

cstrahan wrote: post #5

Nice! For inspiration, you may want to look at `lf`: https://github.com/gokcehan/lf

Also `yazi` https://github.com/sxyazi/yazi , which is the closest nnn-replacement on Windows up until now.

Re: Show HN: Nav – A terminal navigator for interactive `ls` workflows

#27

Post by turboponyy » Thu, Sep 28, 2023, 1:46 PM UTC

There's also ranger and yazi.

Re: Show HN: Nav – A terminal navigator for interactive `ls` workflows

#28

Post by dankco » Thu, Sep 28, 2023, 2:02 PM UTC

jraph wrote: post #23

Seems nice :-) For this part specifically: > the all-too-familiar cycle of `ls` to view a directory, followed by `cd`, then `ls`, and repeat I use (oh-my-)zsh for this. Tab would autocomplete (with some basic support for "fuzzy search" - case insensitive, part for the file works). If there are several options it displays them and they can be selected. When completed, another tab press displays the folder content. For…

I agree! nav supports this workflow in search mode as well, and I could easily support fuzzy searching rather than exact match if that would be valuable.

Re: Show HN: Nav – A terminal navigator for interactive `ls` workflows

#29

Post by dankco » Thu, Sep 28, 2023, 2:02 PM UTC

shashurup wrote: post #24

Looks interesting. Have you thought about implementing marks, so that you can select some files for further operations?

I love this idea and will look into implementing it in the next few days! Thanks!

Re: Show HN: Nav – A terminal navigator for interactive `ls` workflows

#30

Post by janderland » Thu, Sep 28, 2023, 4:02 PM UTC

turboponyy wrote: post #27

There's also ranger and yazi.

I’ve used ranger for years, even fixed a bug I found while using it.

For my work patterns it’s too feature rich. I only use it for browsing directory structures. Everything else just gets in the way because I haven’t taken the time to learn the other features.