starred/terminal
1
0
Fork 0
mirror of https://github.com/microsoft/terminal.git synced 2026-09-24 16:05:21 +00:00
Code Issues 19.0k Packages Projects Releases 20 Wiki Activity

Feature Request: Fuzzy Search #7359

New Issue
Open
opened 2026-01-31 01:01:57 +00:00 by claunia · 3 comments
claunia commented 2026-01-31 01:01:57 +00:00
Owner
Copy Link

Originally created by @iliazlobin on GitHub (Apr 10, 2020).

Originally assigned to: @carlos-zamora on GitHub.

An innate feature to search through the Terminal text is quite limited and basic:

  • it doesn't highlight several entries in the window;
  • it doesn't support using regular expressions;
  • it can't filter output to a fewer number of lines (much like grep does).
  • it only supports strict match;

With the power of fuzzy search, users gain a boost to their productivity of being able to find a text through history very fast. It's implemented in many text editors (JetBrains IDEA, Visual Studio Code) for their project's files search. There's a solution specifically for the command line (bash/zsh) as well - junegunn/fzf.

If we could integrate the feature into the terminal (via its UI) without relying on the bash settings, it would be a great capability!

Originally created by @iliazlobin on GitHub (Apr 10, 2020). Originally assigned to: @carlos-zamora on GitHub. An innate feature to search through the Terminal text is quite limited and basic: - it doesn't highlight several entries in the window; - it doesn't support using regular expressions; - it can't filter output to a fewer number of lines (much like grep does). - it only supports strict match; With the power of fuzzy search, users gain a boost to their productivity of being able to find a text through history very fast. It's implemented in many text editors (JetBrains IDEA, Visual Studio Code) for their project's files search. There's a solution specifically for the command line (bash/zsh) as well - [junegunn/fzf](https://github.com/junegunn/fzf). If we could integrate the feature into the terminal (via its UI) without relying on the bash settings, it would be a great capability!
claunia commented 2026-01-31 01:01:58 +00:00
Author
Owner
Copy Link

@zadjii-msft commented on GitHub (Apr 10, 2020):

Thanks for the suggestion! There are certainly parts of your request that are already being tracked in #3920, but I'll use this issue to specifically track implementing "fuzzy search". Thanks!

@zadjii-msft commented on GitHub (Apr 10, 2020): Thanks for the suggestion! There are certainly parts of your request that are already being tracked in #3920, but I'll use this issue to specifically track implementing "fuzzy search". Thanks!
claunia commented 2026-01-31 01:01:58 +00:00
Author
Owner
Copy Link

@zadjii-msft commented on GitHub (Aug 31, 2023):

@lhecker Just a thought scrolling through the backlog: how hard is this (fzf like search in terminal) now that we've got #15858?

Could we just (behind the scenes) convert something like foo into \b.*?f.*?o.*?o.*?\b? (I'm sure there's a better regex)

@zadjii-msft commented on GitHub (Aug 31, 2023): @lhecker Just a thought scrolling through the backlog: how hard is this (`fzf` like search in terminal) now that we've got #15858? Could we just (behind the scenes) convert something like `foo` into `\b.*?f.*?o.*?o.*?\b`? (I'm sure there's a better regex)
claunia commented 2026-01-31 01:01:58 +00:00
Author
Owner
Copy Link

@lhecker commented on GitHub (Aug 31, 2023):

Hmm, I'm not sure. A fuzzy matcher would sort results by their closeness to the needle. That would mean we would need to still implement a different searcher to rank them. fzf uses a variant of the Smith–Waterman algorithm which we could implement as well. I think something like that would be a requirement for this issue.

But I think #15858 is still helpful for this issue. Since it presents a view into the TextBuffer as if it was a single contiguous string, and because it provides facilities to map character positions back to row/column indices, we can now implement such string search algorithms much easier now.
ICU offers utext based APIs like UTEXT_NEXT32 to return the next UTF-32 character, u_foldCase to turn it into a consistent casing and then we can just feed it into the Smith–Waterman algorithm. Alternatively there's also grapheme cluster iterators, etc.

@lhecker commented on GitHub (Aug 31, 2023): Hmm, I'm not sure. A fuzzy matcher would sort results by their closeness to the needle. That would mean we would need to still implement a different searcher to rank them. fzf uses a variant of the [Smith–Waterman algorithm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith%E2%80%93Waterman_algorithm) which we could implement as well. I think something like that would be a requirement for this issue. But I think #15858 is still helpful for this issue. Since it presents a view into the TextBuffer as if it was a single contiguous string, and because it provides facilities to map character positions back to row/column indices, we can now implement such string search algorithms much easier now. ICU offers `utext` based APIs like `UTEXT_NEXT32` to return the next UTF-32 character, `u_foldCase` to turn it into a consistent casing and then we can just feed it into the Smith–Waterman algorithm. Alternatively there's also grapheme cluster iterators, etc.
Sign in to join this conversation.
No Branch/Tag Specified
Branches Tags
Labels
Clear labels
⛺ Reserved
A11yCO
A11yMAS
A11ySev1
A11ySev2
A11ySev3
A11yTTValidated
A11yUsable
A11yVoiceAccess
A11yWCAG
Area-Accessibility
Area-AtlasEngine
Area-AzureShell
Area-Build
Area-Build
Area-Chat
Area-CmdPal
Area-CodeHealth
Area-Commandline
Area-CookedRead
Area-DefApp
Area-Extensibility
Area-Fonts
Area-GroupPolicy
Area-i18n
Area-Input
Area-Interaction
Area-Interop
Area-Localization
Area-Output
Area-Performance
Area-Portable
Area-Quality
Area-Remoting
Area-Rendering
Area-Schema
Area-Server
Area-Settings
Area-SettingsUI
Area-ShellExtension
Area-ShellExtension
Area-ShellExtension
Area-Suggestions
Area-Suggestions
Area-TerminalConnection
Area-TerminalControl
Area-Theming
Area-UserInterface
Area-VT
Area-Windowing
Area-WPFControl
AutoMerge
Blocking-Ingestion
Culprit-Centennial
Culprit-WinUI
Disability-All
Disability-Blind
Disability-LowVision
Disability-Mobility
External-Blocked-WinUI3
Fixed
Gathering-Data
good first issue
HCL-E+D
HCL-WindowsTerminal
Help Wanted
Impact-Compatibility
Impact-Compliance
Impact-Correctness
Impact-Visual
In-PR
InclusionBacklog
InclusionBacklog-Windows TerminalWin32
InclusionCommitted-202206
Issue-Bug
Issue-Docs
Issue-Feature
Issue-Feature
Issue-Question
Issue-Samples
Issue-Scenario
Issue-Task
Needs-Attention
Needs-Author-Feedback
Needs-Bisect
Needs-Discussion
Needs-Repro
Needs-Tag-Fix
Needs-Tag-Fix
Needs-Triage
No-Recent-Activity
Priority-0
Priority-1
Priority-2
Priority-3
Product-Cmd.exe
Product-Colortool
Product-Colortool
Product-Colortool
Product-Conhost
Product-Conpty
Product-Meta
Product-Powershell
Product-Terminal
Product-WSL
pull-request
Mirrored from GitHub Pull Request
 Resolution-Answered
Resolution-By-Design
Resolution-Duplicate
Resolution-External
Resolution-Fix-Available
Resolution-Fix-Committed
Resolution-No-Repro
Resolution-Won't-Fix
Severity-Blocking
Severity-Crash
Severity-DataLoss
spam
this-will-be-a-breaking-change
Tracking-External
WindowsTerminal_Win32
Work-Item
zAskModeBug
zInbox-Bug
No Label Area-TerminalControl Area-UserInterface Issue-Task Product-Terminal
Milestone
No items
No Milestone
Projects
Clear projects
No project
Assignees
Clear assignees
claunia
No Assignees
1 Participants
Notifications
Due Date
No due date set.
Dependencies

No dependencies set.

Reference: starred/terminal#7359
Delete Branch "%!s()"

Deleting a branch is permanent. Although the deleted branch may continue to exist for a short time before it actually gets removed, it CANNOT be undone in most cases. Continue?