FAQ

How to input a hyphen - in the keyword ?

Q: There is a ~/Documents/github/vue-my-ui directory, but when I use z vue-my-ui the directory cannot be matched.

A: - is a reserved character in lua regexp. you can use either z vue%-my%-ui or z vue my ui.

If you don't like this behavior, you can set:

export _ZL_HYPHEN=1

to escape - into %- automatically and z vue-my-ui will jump to ~/Documents/github/vue-my-ui but you cannot use - as a regexp keywords any more.

How to integrate z.lua to ranger ?

Copy ranger_zlua.py to your ~/.config/ranger/plugins folder, and set environment variable in your shell rc:

export RANGER_ZLUA="/path/to/z.lua"

The integration script provides a z command in ranger. It also tracks directories changes in ranger.

How to use z as cd ?

Paste this script in your .bashrc / .zshrc:

function j() {
    if [[ "$argv[1]" == "-"* ]]; then
        z "$@"
    else
        cd "$@" 2> /dev/null || z "$@"
    fi
}

When you are using j xxx it will first try cd xxx and then z xxx if cd failed.

fz.sh for better completion

fz is a bash/zsh plugin that seamlessly adds fuzzy search to tab completion of z.sh. z.lua can work with it for better completion result, just define a _z function and pass all the arguments to _zlua before sourcing fz.sh:

FZ_HISTORY_CD_CMD="_zlua"
source /path/to/fz.sh

If you are using zsh with antigen, initialize them like this:

antigen bundle skywind3000/z.lua
antigen bundle changyuheng/fz

function _z() { _zlua "$@"; }

How to import data from bash / zsh command history ?

Issue #46 asked for a script to import some history path from bash command history after a fresh install of z.lua and @antonalekseev provided two script below:

for bash:

fc -ln -10000| sed -e 's|^'[[:blank:]]' ||'|grep -o "^cd [~/].*"|sed -e "s|cd ||" -e "s|~|$HOME|" -e 's|\\ | |' -e "s|/$||"|sort|uniq|while read -r d; do test -d "$d" && echo "$d|1|0"; done >> ~/z.lua

for zsh:

fc -ln 0|grep -o "^cd [~/].*"|sed -e "s|cd ||" -e "s|~|$HOME|" -e 's|\\ | |' -e "s|/$||"|sort|uniq|while read -r d; do test -d "$d" && echo "$d|1|0"; done >> ~/z.lua

These two scripts above can be used for pre-warm .zlua database.

Define a new z -I

Define a new zii shell function to override z -I:

function zii() {
    local $dir="$(z -l "$@"|fzf --nth 2.. --reverse --inline-info --tac +s -e --height 35%)"
    [ -n "$dir" ] && cd "$dir"
}

or just ignore the frecent order:

function zii() {
    local $dir="$(z -l -s "$@"|fzf ---reverse -e --height 35%)"
    [ -n "$dir" ] && cd "$dir"
}