fzf: turn a long list into a searchable selection

Pick from a list you understand

fzf is Junegunn Choi and contributors’ terminal fuzzy finder. It reads candidate lines from standard input and writes the selected item to standard output. Without piped input, its default file walker builds the candidate list. This makes it useful for selecting a file or a history entry; it does not search the contents of every file.

Start with selection

Use a small list first. Type a fragment to narrow the candidates, move the selection and press Enter, or cancel with Esc. Inspect the resulting text before connecting it to an editor or another command. Preview commands and custom bindings add behavior beyond simply filtering a list. The README documents these separately from optional shell integration.

Check your actual shell setup

In issue 4945, AlexPKok reports that a custom == completion trigger leaves those characters in the resulting filename with fzf 0.74.5 on Linux/Bash. Two commenters describe reproducing the interaction with Bash word boundaries. The issue remains open; a linked fork is not an upstream release fix. Boloop has not reproduced it. Start with the documented defaults and test completion in your shell before adopting custom triggers. Boloop has not installed or run fzf for this recommendation.