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+---
+title:  "Shortcutting with fish shell"
+date:   2022-02-23
+tags: ['fish', 'linux', 'shell']
+---
+
+For some time now I have been using fish shell[^1] as my default shell and it
+has been a great experience. It has sane defaults and with almost no work I
+have a perfectly function shell with a great auto completion engine. I have
+also tried zsh before and although it is great shell it require some work to
+come to same level of fish, even after you include oh-my-zsh[^2] (which I'd
+highly recommend to use if you are starting to use zsh). One thing to keep in
+mind is that  fish is far from sh or bash compatible, so if you have something
+built in sh or bash it won't work with fish. Anyhow, what I want to show here
+is how much you can optimize your workflow with just a couple lines of shell.
+
+## The use case
+
+As an assiduous user of terminal I constantly need to jump from folder to
+folder between projects I’m working on whether to run an editor or to use git.
+
+Normally I'd just type `cd ~/Git/gabrielgio` and from there to another folder,
+but we can do better with fish (or any other shell actually) by assigning this
+action to a keystroke. However before we can add the shortcut itself lets first
+create a function to jump into the folder, to do so we will be using the `fzf`
+where the man page states:
+
+> a command-line fuzzy finder
+
+That will provide a nice way to search and pick from arbitrary list. You can
+get quick glance of how it work just type `find . | fzf` and it will open the
+fuzzy finder buffer interactively search for input keyword. To expose this
+functions of ours we are going to use a nice feature from fish which autoloads
+function[^3]  from all the `.fish` files from all folders listed in
+`$fish_function_path`. So we will be using the `~/.config/fish/functions`
+folder. Add a new file called `jumpin.fish` with the following content:
+
+```fish
+# ~/.config/fish/functions/jumpin.fish
+function jumpin
+end
+```
+
+Now lets plug `fzf` into that function.
+
+
+```fish
+# ~/.config/fish/functions/jumpin.fish
+function jumpin
+    set selected (ls ~/Git | fzf)
+    pushd ~/Git/$selected
+end
+```
+
+We are going to pip `ls` result into `fzf` then `set`[^4]  result of `fzf` into
+a variable. The return value of `fzf` is the value you have selected. As you
+can infer from the script I'm listing all my folder from `Git` folder where I
+store all my projects which are the folder I, most of the time, want to jump
+right in. It can be literally anything you may find useful, you may want to try
+to search using a broader scope by:
+
+```sh
+find ~/ -type d | fzf
+```
+
+Whatever fits you better, the end goal here is to get start customizing and
+optimizing your workflow so you can more comfortably moving around.
+
+Now, it is almost done we just need the check if the `selected` has value. The
+user can cancel the selection (e.g.: by pressing esc) and then the `selected`
+variable would be empty. To check that we just need an if:
+
+```fish
+# ~/.config/fish/functions/jumpin.fish
+function jumpin
+    set selected (ls ~/Git | fzf)
+    if [ "$selected" ]
+        cd ~/Git/$selected
+    end
+end
+```
+
+You will need to  reopen your terminal emulator or if you source it so the
+function become available.
+
+```fish
+# how to source it
+source ~/.config/fish/functions/jumpin.fish
+```
+
+Then type `jumpin` and let `fzf` do the work.
+
+Now we can jump to a folder even faster by assigning a shortcut to a function
+and again fish comes to rescue to make our life easier. It provider a bind[^5]
+function to bind (duh) sequence of characters to a function. Inside of you
+`~/.config/fish/` there will be a `config.fish` with a function called
+`fish_user_key_bindings` which fish will automatically execute. We will use
+that function (as the name implies) to bind our command to a keystroke. To do
+so use the bind function:
+
+```fish
+# ~/.config/fish/config.fish
+function fish_user_key_bindings
+  # ...
+  bind \ck 'jumpin'
+end
+```
+
+Once again reopen the terminal or source the configuration file. Now once you
+press `Ctrl+k` it will pop the `fzf` list picker and after you select something
+you will jump right into the folder. Due to the fuzzy finder algorithm you
+won't need to type more then a couple of char making the whole process really
+fast.
+
+This is just a jump start to using script to make your life easier. Shell
+scripting is a powerful tool for a programmer and it will definitely pay some
+dividends if you spend time to master it.
+
+[^1]: https://fishshell.com/
+[^2]: https://ohmyz.sh
+[^3]: https://fishshell.com/docs/current/language.html#autoloading-functions
+[^4]: https://fishshell.com/docs/current/cmds/set.html
+[^5]: https://fishshell.com/docs/current/cmds/bind.html