Bash tip of the day: ff

This is helping me sooo much that it would a crime not to share it. It's actually nothing fancy, just a very convenient thing that I've learned to get used to. ff is an executable script I use to find files in a git repository. Goes like this:

$ ff list
templates/operations/network-packing-list.html
templates/sales/list_orders.html
$ ff venue
templates/venues/venues-by-special.html
templates/venues/venues.html
templatetags/venue_extras.py
templatetags/venues_by_network_extras.py
tests/test_venues.py

It makes it easy to super quickly search for added files without having to use the slow find command which would also otherwise find backup files and other junk that isn't checked in.

To install it, create a file called ~/bin/ff and make it executable:

$ chmod +x ~/bin/ff

Then type this code in:

#!/usr/bin/python
import sys, os
args = sys.argv[1:]
i = False
if '-i' in args:
   i = True
   args.remove('-i')
pattern = args[-1]
extra_args = ''
if len(args) > 1:
   extra_args = ' '.join(args[:-1])
param = i and "-i" or ""
cmd = "git ls-files | grep %s %s '%s'" % (param, extra_args, pattern)
os.system(cmd)