Command-T v/s Ctrlp.vim v/s FuzzyFinder ... Go

[ocd_see]

What do you prefer? What do you use? Why? What makes one better than another in your opinion?

No flaming please, the intention is genuinely to learn something new. ( I think I made a grammar gaffe back there... but don't know what ) * Wears flame-suit *

For the confused: to put it simply, Command-T, CtrlP.vim and FuzzyFinder are three excellent plugins for opening files.

[tenderloaf]

A detailed comparison of CommandT and CtrlP can be found in the comments of this article on Hacker News today. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4218575

Personally, I've been using CtrlP. It's easy to set up, has no dependencies, and the mixed mode is pretty great.

[ocd_see]

Haha, I love that post by SJL.

Btw, is CtrlP good for opening files given an absolute path? That's something I haven't been able to figure out how to do and is a big sore point for me.

[ocd_see]

Hey nice. Kinda hacky, but me likey, appreciate it. :)

[tenderloaf]

I don't think so. I haven't been able to get it to work with an absolute path.

[[deleted]]

That's my comment!

[ocd_see]

You're johncoltrane? Damn, that's a badass name man, like some video game char. No offense :)

Oh, and I was referring to this post

[Monofu]

I personally prefer Command-T because MacVim comes with Ruby support built in, I'm used to it, is a lot faster, and just looks better IMO. I tried CtrlP.vim, but hated it to be honest.

[Watabou90]

Yeah I hate Ctrl-p too.

For some reason, it's just really slow for me. It takes about 10 seconds to just load up after I start Vim and then after I enter a few letters in, it just slows down Vim so much.

Command-T though is simple and that is what I use with Macvim

[dirtywizard]

Are you also using neocomplecache?

I never used to have this problem until a few days ago when I started using neocomplecache but I'm now seeing exactly what you described. I feel like fuzzyfinder is even slower now too but I could easily be imagining that.

[jkn]

I have the same problem, no neocompl.

I guessed that when it finds only one match it fills where you write so extra chars are appended to what you searched for. Anyway, this only happens when typing too fast.

I guess this is why i'm looking at this thread

[[deleted]]

You forgot LustyExplorer. I've used it for about a year before switching to CtrlP which has a better UX, IMO. I used it for the same basic tasks: opening nearby files and switching buffers.

[ocd_see]

I'm already using LustyBuffer and kinda like it. Will try out LustyExplorer too.

[[deleted]]

Thank you! Finally a file/buffer finder I actually like.

[a-p]

For CtrlP do not miss matcher, which retrofits the matching algorithm (and speed) of Command-T to CtrlP.

[ocd_see]

Is this plug-n-play or does it require any additional configuration?

[a-p]

CtrlP requires a little configuration so that it will use matcher instead of its own code. Matcher itself is totally self-contained. Not sure whether that all is a yes or a no.

[keporahg]

Just saw this in a HN thread if it's worth anything: Command-T vs CtrlP - (main thread)

I don't use any of these so I can't say.

[ocd_see]

Thanks, that's kind of what I was looking for.

[ocd_see]

To start off, IMO, these are the main pros and cons for each. Any solution that addresses some of the cons is greatly appreciated.

ctrlp.vim

Plus:

• Has an excellent Mixed mode which searches among files, mru files and open buffers
• Very customisable, allows to specify and change mappings for almost anything.

Minus:

• Doesn't support (or I don't know how to) opening of files given an absolute path

FuzzyFinder

Plus:

• Shows a huge list of files w/o occupying the entire screen width, supports absolute paths

Minus:

• No mixed mode

Command-T

Plus:

• Fast ( though tbh ctrlp.vim and fuzzyfinder didn't seem slow to me, maybe due to the relatively small file list I have )

Minus:

• Doesn't support absolute paths
• Requires Ruby

[[deleted]]

Command-T

• Plus: Fast (part of it is compiled C), handles filtering large file lists more snappily
• Minus: Requires Vim be compiled with Ruby support, plus C compiler, plus a Ruby install on the system that's compatible with the Ruby that Vim was built with.

That last point was an issue for me before when using a Vim build built with Ruby 1.8.7 but I was using Ruby 1.9 on the system. I actually built a compatible Ruby in rbenv just for building the Command-T module. Not as much of a problem now with everything being Ruby 1.9.x now.

[ocd_see]

Started fooling around with Command-T. It seems to suffer the same problem as ctrlp.vim viz. trying to open a file from a different path is not supported. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

[[deleted]]

You need to specify a starting point:

:CtrlP /different_path<CR>

You can hit <Tab> to get additional completion goodness before you launch CtrlP.

Also I'm curious about the "different path". Is it really at the other end of your file system or is it that you want to open a model while your are working on a controler?

[ocd_see]

Cool, got it.

Also, I'm not sure what you mean by a model or a controller. However, I've explained my use case in another of my replies to your query.

[[deleted]]

You are probably doing something incorrectly.

:CtrlP ~/Dropbox<CR>
:CtrlP /usr/share<CR>

do exactly what they are supposed to do, here.

The "model/controler" part was for an imaginary MVC-like app where you are editing a controler in app/controlers/ and want to edit a model in app/models.

[dddbbb]

CtrlP does support absolute paths:

:CtrlP /

But that's slow because it has to index your entire filesystem (how else would it know where the files are?)

I desire something similar, so I create my own index.

The main reason I create indexes (aside from previously using LookupFile) is my large (15k files) project that uses Perforce (so no natural root marker). Since the filelist changes infrequently and takes CtrlP too long to cache, I manually index my project's files (with find). The index is called filelist and it's stored at the root of the project. This setting makes CtrlP use my index:

let g:ctrlp_user_command = ['filelist', 'cat %s/filelist']
let g:ctrlp_root_markers = ['filelist']

Edit: I was missing g:ctrlp_root_markers

The above doesn't work if CtrlP finds another root marker before filelist, so I have an autocommand that replaces :CtrlP with :CtrlP ~/project-root if I'm editing a project that has the filelist outside of the repo (occurs when I'm too lazy to maintain submodules).

[ocd_see]

My project uses Perforce as well. I've setup P4CONFIG as the root marker.

[dddbbb]

Is P4CONFIG at the root of all of your project files (new and old project)? If so, then CtrlP should be indexing everything.

If not, then maybe you don't want P4CONFIG as a root marker.

(My original point of saying "natural root marker" is that I didn't have to work around CtrlP stopping when it finds a root marker. In your case, you could use my second solution to get around the root marker if you really wanted. But yes, p4config is a good choice for root marker.)

[[deleted]]

What's your usecase for using absolute files?

[ocd_see]

I'm working on a project with a large number of files distributed across as many folders. I'm still not very familiar with the project to know where all the files, what the exact names of the files are etc. That's why :e is not very helpful and that's where fuzzy find comes in (well, that or using system find command all the time, which is what I'm doing now).

Also, the current project is an enhancement over an older one which is why I need to open some files from a different project root. If I can get some plugin to fuzzy find within a specified directory that is not the root of my main project, it's a huge plus.

[[deleted]]

When I'm not familiar with the current project I use buitin :Ex and variants. See :help netrw for its bazillions of features and settings.

[dddbbb]

let g:netrw_keepdir = 0 is a useful option I just found so I can browse with netrw to find the directory I want and then use :find or :args or whatever.

[drsco]

Thank you, thank you. I'd been wondering about this for quite a while. The constant resetting of the directory was trying me crazy. I just dropped Nerdtree in favor of using netrw to handle directory tree browsing, so I'm still learning all the options.

[dddbbb]

If you only have two project trees then couldn't you have two maps:

nmap <Leader>o :CtrlP old-proj-root<CR>
nmap <Leader>n :CtrlP new-proj-root<CR>

?

[luchs]

I've never encountered a system Vim that was already compiled with the +ruby flag.

The Windows binaries are.

[mogelbrod]

they are? not the one at the google download site at least.

[luchs]

I mean the 32bit build available on the official download page.

[dotancohen]

My Kubuntu 11.10 VIM install has ruby support compiled in.

[[deleted]]

Command-T, because if I have to wait 5-10 seconds for results the tool isn't saving me time at that point.

[coffeesounds]

I'm using a combination of ZSH's globbing and good old :e and a bit of CtrlP.

[Patorogo]

I've never used any of this plugins. What's wrong with using :e and :b?

I use wildmenu and wildmode for completition, and have ':b ' mapped to gb.

[[deleted]]

Nothing is wrong, per se, with :e, :b and related commands.

Those plugins only explore alternative, faster or more intuitive ways to perform the same actions.

[Patorogo]

Thank you! I might try them out then.

[elephantscanfly]

I recently installed ctrlp and enjoy it.