Simple, slick, and fast terminal CLI to search files and directories.

Why it is fast

• Uses streamed rg output (no giant single-buffer capture).
• Falls back to Go filepath.WalkDir if rg is not installed.
• Uses a top-K heap for ranking (keeps only best -limit matches in memory).
• Keeps files and directories in separate indexes so empty directories can be found.

Build

go build -o tsearch .

Usage

./tsearch [flags]          # interactive by default
./tsearch [flags] <query>  # runs first query, then stays interactive

Interactive UI:

• -ui auto (default): uses fzf when available in a real TTY, otherwise plain prompt mode.
• -ui fzf: force fzf TUI.
• -ui plain: force line-prompt mode.

fzf key bindings:

• Enter or Ctrl-O: open selected path in your editor
• Ctrl-Y: copy selected path to clipboard
• Ctrl-R: reindex and refresh list

Text content search:

./tsearch -text "needle" -glob '*.txt'
./tsearch -root /path -text "password" -glob '*.md'

Output format:

• /absolute/path <dir>
• /absolute/path <file>
• -format plain prints only paths, one per line
• -format jsonl prints one JSON object per result
• -0 prints NUL-separated paths for shell pipelines

Wildcard search:

• * matches any sequence of characters
• ? matches a single character
• Example: '*.txt' (quote wildcard in shell)

Ranking:

• Exact basename and path-segment matches rank higher than embedded matches.
• Matching is case-insensitive UTF-8 byte matching; it does not normalize Unicode.

Color coding:

• Directories: cyan
• Go files: bright green
• Code files: blue
• Config files: magenta
• Docs: gray
• Archives: red
• Images: bright magenta
• Media/executable/hidden files have their own styles

Flags

• -root root directory to search (default current directory)
• -type file|dir|all (default all)
• -limit max results (default 100)
• -hidden include hidden files
• -no-ignore ignore .gitignore and other ignore rules
• -color auto|always|never (default auto)
• -i force interactive mode (reload command refreshes the index)
• -text search text inside files (content search mode)
• -glob filter indexed/searched files by glob (e.g. *.txt)
• -progress show progress during large scans/matches (default true)
• -once run a single query and exit
• -ui interactive UI mode: auto|plain|fzf
• -editor editor command for open action (default $VISUAL / $EDITOR)
• -format output format: human|plain|jsonl (default human)
• -0 use NUL-separated plain paths

Examples

# Search both files and directories
./tsearch auth

# One-shot mode (exit directly after output)
./tsearch -once auth

# Interactive search in current directory
./tsearch

# Files only
./tsearch -type file handler

# Directories only
./tsearch -type dir srcapi

# Search another root
./tsearch -root ~/projects client

# Wildcard search
./tsearch '*.txt'

# Search text inside text files
./tsearch -root ~/projects -text "TODO" -glob '*.txt'

# Interactive mode
./tsearch -i -root ~/projects

# Force fzf TUI + custom editor
./tsearch -ui fzf -editor "nvim" -root ~/projects