Use fzf and fzy to add fuzzy search tools to the shell
Near Miss
Fuzzy finders retrieve useful results from data streams even if there are no exact matches.
Today, fuzzy searches are an integral part of everyday IT life. They correct typos, detect similarities, and offer a way to find what you need with reasonable overhead, even in unstructured data. The basic principle is based on the Levenshtein distance [1], word distances defined in the 1960s (see the "Levenshtein" box). Developers have extended and optimized this algorithm more or less from the start.
Having said this, many standard tools ignore fuzzy searches or limit themselves to highly simplified variants up to this day. For example, the grep tool from the coreutils package processes arbitrarily complex regular expressions (patterns), but it does not support fuzzy searching. Fuzzy searching is supported by agrep [2] and ugrep [3] at the command line, and there are several other, less well-known tools. Agrep impresses here with a best-match option.
Fzf [4] and fzy [5] (see the "Little Brother" box) enrich the shell construction kit, adding two new, powerful tools. They act as interactive filters, i.e., by default, they source their data from the standard input and return the results to the standard output. Interactive in this context means that they provide interfaces for entering the search patterns, which allow the search patterns to be adapted and refined at runtime.
[...]
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
US / Canada
UK / Australia
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
Blender App Makes it to the Big Screen
The animated film "Flow" won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature at the 97th Academy Awards held on March 2, 2025 and Blender was a part of it.
-
Linux Mint Retools the Cinnamon App Launcher
The developers of Linux Mint are working on an improved Cinnamon App Launcher with a better, more accessible UI.
-
New Linux Tool for Security Issues
Seal Security is launching a new solution to automate fixing Linux vulnerabilities.
-
Ubuntu 25.04 Coming Soon
Ubuntu 25.04 (Plucky Puffin) has been given an April release date with many notable updates.
-
Gnome Developers Consider Dropping RPM Support
In a move that might shock a lot of users, the Gnome development team has proposed the idea of going straight up Flatpak.
-
openSUSE Tumbleweed Ditches AppArmor for SELinux
If you're an openSUSE Tumbleweed user, you can expect a major change to the distribution.
-
Plasma 6.3 Now Available
Plasma desktop v6.3 has a couple of pretty nifty tricks up its sleeve.
-
LibreOffice 25.2 Has Arrived
If you've been hoping for a release that offers more UI customizations, you're in for a treat.
-
TuxCare Has a Big AlmaLinux 9 Announcement in Store
TuxCare announced it has successfully completed a Security Technical Implementation Guide for AlmaLinux OS 9.
-
First Release Candidate for Linux Kernel 6.14 Now Available
Linus Torvalds has officially released the first release candidate for kernel 6.14 and it includes over 500,000 lines of modified code, making for a small release.