Standalone selection script

[avidseeker]

I have a script that returns paths separated by new lines. What I want is a functionality for lf so that

$ script_that_filters_files | lf

end up with lf opening up and having those files that are read from stdin as its selection.

I understand I can map it within lf like this:

$ lf -remote "send $id select '$(fzf)'"

But can this be done as a standalone script? Would this feature be worth adding?

[joelim-work]

You can use the -command option to have lf do something upon startup (such as selecting files), and then wrap that up into a script:

lfselect.sh

#!/bin/sh

lf -command "cmd on-init toggle $(tr '\n' ' ')"

And then use it like so:

ls | head -n 5 | lfselect.sh

[avidseeker]

Hmm, this results in an error (showing up as red in the status bar):

toggle: lstat /home/user/

[joelim-work]

I guess that means /home/user/ doesn't exist on your system since lstat failed

[avidseeker]

No it exists. If I run ls on a different path, say

$ ls / | head -n5 | lf -command "cmd on-init toggle $(tr '\n' ' ')"

it results in an idle prompt, and when ^d is pressed it only selects first result in home which is ~/.cache.

I ran it again with no path (defaulting to $HOME) and it showed:

tr: read error: Input/output error

[joelim-work]

Why are you piping the result into of ls | head directly into lf instead of a wrapper script that invokes lf? The wrapper script exists so that it can read the result from stdin via command substitution and physically populate them into the argument of lf -command.

Also another thing is that the toggle command will resolve relative paths in the context of the CWD of lf, so you may want to use find instead of ls as it can output absolute paths instead.

[avidseeker]

Oops, my bad. It works now without errors when using find instead of lf. Thank you

[avidseeker]

More questions:

• Currently lf starts at home. Can I have it go to the first selected file?

• Would this work if files have spaces in them?

Alternatives I considered which I wonder why they don't work:

lf -command "cmd on-init toggle $(IFS='
' cat)"

IFS='
' lf -command "cmd on-init toggle $(cat)"