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Denys Séguret
Denys Séguret

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broot, a new way to browse directories

I always loved the overview you can get from a tree like view. But tree is almost never usable, because it usually generates pages (or hundreds of pages) of output.

tree is also not interactively searchable and of course doesn't act as a launcher.

tree was one of the starting point in the reflection. fzf was another one, I can't live without fuzzy search anymore.

And thus I made broot which I use all the time, which lets me go to any directory or file with a few keystrokes and faster than any other one.

shortcut

It's ready for general consumption, now, but I'm still thirsty for feedback.

broot can be launched with commands, which allows for example non interactive shortcuts like this one:

dcd rulset

If any rust expert is around, I'd love to discuss the code, especially any ideas of micro-optimizations (the development of such a program is all about speed).

GitHub logo Canop / broot

A new way to see and navigate directory trees : https://dystroy.org/broot

Broot

Tests MIT Latest Version Chat on Miaou Packaging status

A better way to navigate directories

Complete Documentation - Installation Instructions - Contributing or Getting Help

Get an overview of a directory, even a big one

Hit br -s

overview

Notice the unlisted?

That's what makes it usable where the old tree command would produce pages of output.

.gitignore files are properly dealt with to put unwanted files out of your way.

As you sometimes want to see gitignored files, or hidden ones, you'll soon get used to the alti and alth shortcuts to toggle those visibilities.

(you can ignore them though, see documentation).

Find a directory then cd to it

type a few letters

cd

Hit altenter and you're back to the terminal in the desired location.

This way, you can navigate to a directory with the minimum amount of keystrokes, even if you don't exactly remember where it is.

Broot is fast and doesn't…

Top comments (11)

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tobiassn profile image
Tobias SN

I am broot.

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dmfay profile image
Dian Fay

This is neat! I don't know if there's really an "interactive tree"-shaped hole in how I navigate filesystems but it's always fun to see a new take on the basics.

Suggestion: ctrl+j/k to move the cursor down/up for the vi people?

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dystroy profile image
Denys Séguret

Good suggestion. The :q and such should already help vi people (like me) at home.

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qm3ster profile image
Mihail Malo

Radical, works for me. Added the bash script too.
May I suggest adding the following to cargo.toml?

[profile.release]
lto = true
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autoferrit profile image
Shawn McElroy

While not in a "tree" structure, why not something like z with fzf. that will allow me to go to or edit a file pretty quickly

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dystroy profile image
Denys Séguret

z ? I'm sorry, I don't see what you refer to (my knowledge of fzf is quite limited).

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autoferrit profile image
Shawn McElroy • Edited

theres a tool called z where i can type say z folderName and it will jump to a directory that I have been to in the past with cd. just typing z will show me all the directories I have been to recently, ranked by how often I go to them.

fzf is a pretty terminal ui for finding files (in picture). Though, fzf has a lot of other great uses found here:

github.com/junegunn/fzf
fzf

I was just curious why you didn't use those. But if you were not familiar with them, that makes sense. I could do most of what you do with fzf and z. However, I do really like what you have made here. What I like is the tree like structure. I have installed it and was playing with it earlier. Good work. I'll have to keep it.

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dystroy profile image
Denys Séguret

I'm familiar with fzf for finding files, and I used it a lot before to use broot, it's a great tool (and one of those innovations which inspired a lot of other ones). But I didn't knew of z.

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janpauldahlke profile image
jan paul

nice thing man, although iam not into rust

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qm3ster profile image
Mihail Malo

What? Why? :O

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crewsycrews profile image
🎲Danil Rodin🎲

Great work, man! Will try.