Last Updated on May 22, 2022
In Operation
There’s no purpose of a regular screenshot of peco in action, as it won’t show much. Instead, here’s a very short video highlighting the incremental search functionality. The search results are filtered on each keypress. This is a time saver when you’re looking for something you cannot exactly remember.
When you find the line you’re after, press enter and the line is printed to stdout. Then you can pipe that line to other utilities.
The video only illustrates incremental search, but the utility offers tons more. For example, the tool lets you select multiple lines, which can be a range of lines.
You may notice from our video that we’re using the case-insensitive filter (that’s IgnoreCase), which is the default filter. But there are other filters available. Specifically, CaseSensitive, SmartCase, Regexp and Fuzzy filters.
The SmartCase filter uses case-insensitive matching when all of the queries are lower case, and case-sensitive matching otherwise. The Regexp filter allows you to use any valid regular expression to match lines. The Fuzzy filter allows you to find matches using partial patterns. The Fuzzy filter uses smart case search like the SmartCase filter.
Next page: Page 3 – Other Features
Pages in this article:
Page 1 – Introduction / Installation
Page 2 – In Operation
Page 3 – Other Features
Page 4 – Summary
Complete list of articles in this series:
| Excellent Utilities | |
|---|---|
| AES Crypt | Encrypt files using the Advanced Encryption Standard |
| Ananicy | Shell daemon created to manage processes’ IO and CPU priorities |
| broot | Next gen tree explorer and customizable launcher |
| Cerebro | Fast application launcher |
| cheat.sh | Community driven unified cheat sheet |
| CopyQ | Advanced clipboard manager |
| croc | Securely transfer files and folders from the command-line |
| Deskreen | Live streaming your desktop to a web browser |
| duf | Disk usage utility with more polished presentation than the classic df |
| eza | A turbo-charged alternative to the venerable ls command |
| Extension Manager | Browse, install and manage GNOME Shell Extensions |
| fd | Wonderful alternative to the venerable find |
| fkill | Kill processes quick and easy |
| fontpreview | Quickly search and preview fonts |
| horcrux | File splitter with encryption and redundancy |
| Kooha | Simple screen recorder |
| KOReader | Document viewer for a wide variety of file formats |
| Imagine | A simple yet effective image optimization tool |
| LanguageTool | Style and grammar checker for 30+ languages |
| Liquid Prompt | Adaptive prompt for Bash & Zsh |
| lnav | Advanced log file viewer for the small-scale; great for troubleshooting |
| lsd | Like exa, lsd is a turbo-charged alternative to ls |
| Mark Text | Simple and elegant Markdown editor |
| McFly | Navigate through your bash shell history |
| mdless | Formatted and highlighted view of Markdown files |
| noti | Monitors a command or process and triggers a notification |
| Nushell | Flexible cross-platform shell with a modern feel |
| nvitop | GPU process management for NVIDIA graphics cards |
| OCRmyPDF | Add OCR text layer to scanned PDFs |
| Oh My Zsh | Framework to manage your Zsh configuration |
| Paperwork | Designed to simplify the management of your paperwork |
| pastel | Generate, analyze, convert and manipulate colors |
| PDF Mix Tool | Perform common editing operations on PDF files |
| peco | Simple interactive filtering tool that's remarkably useful |
| ripgrep | Recursively search directories for a regex pattern |
| Rnote | Sketch and take handwritten notes |
| scrcpy | Display and control Android devices |
| Sticky | Simulates the traditional “sticky note” style stationery on your desktop |
| tldr | Simplified and community-driven man pages |
| tmux | A terminal multiplexer that offers a massive boost to your workflow |
| Tusk | An unofficial Evernote client with bags of potential |
| Ulauncher | Sublime application launcher |
| Watson | Track the time spent on projects |
| Whoogle Search | Self-hosted and privacy-focused metasearch engine |
| Zellij | Terminal workspace with batteries included |
You should compare it with fzf. Seems to be much more popular (for example, fzf is in both Arch and Fedora repos, but I didn’t find peco in either). I’m sure there are subtle differences if you dig deep enough, but it would be good to know if something fundamental is different / better in one or the other.
sitaram, if you want to compare peco with fzf go right ahead.