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https://github.com/lewang/flx

Fuzzy matching for Emacs ... a la Sublime Text.
https://github.com/lewang/flx

Last synced: about 2 months ago
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Fuzzy matching for Emacs ... a la Sublime Text.

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README 

        
[![Build Status](https://travis-ci.org/lewang/flx.png)](http://travis-ci.org/lewang/flx)

[![MELPA](https://melpa.org/packages/flx-badge.svg)](https://melpa.org/#/flx)

[![MELPA Stable](https://stable.melpa.org/packages/flx-badge.svg)](https://stable.melpa.org/#/flx)



## Status



This project is more than a year old now.  Lots of bugs have been worked out.



It appears some people use it on a regular basis.



## Screencast



[Screencast showing rationale and ido workflow][]



## Installation



### Manual



Just drop all `.el` files somewhere on your `load-path`. Here's an

example using the folder `~/.emacs.d/vendor`:



```lisp

(add-to-list 'load-path "~/emacs.d/vendor")

```



### Package Repositories



Available packages:



- `flx` - matching engine

- `flx-ido` - ido interface for flx



Install `flx-ido` will pull in `flx` as a dependency.



#### [MELPA](http://melpa.milkbox.net)



If you're an Emacs 24 user or you have a recent version of `package.el` you

can install `flx-ido` from MELPA.



This version will always be up-to-date.



#### [Marmalade](http://marmalade-repo.org/)



`flx-ido` is also available on the Marmalade `package.el` repository.



### Emacs Prelude



`flx-ido` is part of the

[Emacs Prelude](https://github.com/bbatsov/prelude). If you're a Prelude

user - `flx-ido` is already properly configured and ready for

action.



### Debian and Ubuntu



Users of Debian 9 or Ubuntu 16.04 or later may simply `apt-get install

elpa-flx`.



## Usage



The sorting algorithm is a balance between word beginnings (abbreviation) and

contiguous matches (substring).



The longer the substring match, the higher it scores.  This maps well to how

we think about matching.



In general, it's better form queries with only lowercase characters so

the sorting algorithm can do something smart.



For example, if you have these files:



        projects/clojure-mode/clojure-mode.el

        projects/prelude/core/prelude-mode.el



If the search term was *pre-mode*, you might expect "prelude-mode.el" to rank

higher.  However because the substring match "re-mode" is so long,

"clojure-mode.el" actually scores higher.



**Here, using *premode* would give the expected order.** Notice that the

"-" actually prevents the algorithm from helping you.



### uppercase letters



Flx always folds lowercase letters to match uppercase.  However, you can use uppercase letters for force flx to only match uppercase.



This is similar to Emacs' case-folding.  The difference is mixing in uppercase letters **does not disable** folding.



### completing file names



Matches within the basepath score higher.



## ido support



Add this to your init file and *flx* match will be enabled for ido.



```lisp

(require 'flx-ido)

(ido-mode 1)

(ido-everywhere 1)

(flx-ido-mode 1)

;; disable ido faces to see flx highlights.

(setq ido-enable-flex-matching t)

(setq ido-use-faces nil)

```



If you don't want to use the `flx`'s highlights you can turn them off like this:



```lisp

(setq flx-ido-use-faces nil)

```



### Flx uses a complex matching heuristics which can be slow for large collections



Customize `flx-ido-threshold` to change the collection size above which flx

will revert to flex matching.



As soon as the collection is narrowed below `flx-ido-threshold`, flx will

kick in again.



As a point of reference for a 2.3 GHz quad-core i7 processor, a value of

`10000` still provides a reasonable completion experience.



## Helm support



[Helm][] is not supported yet.  There is a demo showing how it could work, but I'm

still working through how to integrate it into helm.



The Helm demo shows the score of the top 20 matches.



## Memory Usage



The `flx` algorithm willingly sacrifices memory usage for speed.



For 10k file names, about 10 MB of memory will be used to speed up future

matching.  This memory is never released to keep the match speed fast.



So far with modern computers, this feels like a reasonable design decision.



It may change in future.



## GC Optimization



Emacs's garbage collector is fairly primitive stop the world type.  GC time can

contribute significantly to the run-time of computation that allocates and

frees a lot of memory.



Consider the following example:



```lisp

(defun uuid ()

  (format "%08x-%08x-%08x-%08x"

          (random (expt 16 4))

          (random (expt 16 4))

          (random (expt 16 4))

          (random (expt 16 4))))



(benchmark-run 1

  (let ((cache (flx-make-filename-cache)))

    (dolist (i (number-sequence 0 10000))

      (flx-process-cache (uuid) cache))))

        ;;; ⇒ (0.899678 9 0.33650300000000044)

```



This means that roughly 30% of time is spent just doing garbage-collection.



`flx` can benefit significantly from garbage collection tuning.



By default Emacs will initiate GC every 0.76 MB allocated (`gc-cons-threshold`

== 800000).  If we increase this to 20 MB (`gc-cons-threshold` == 20000000)

we get:



```lisp

(benchmark-run 1

  (setq gc-cons-threshold 20000000)

  (let ((cache (flx-make-filename-cache)))

    (dolist (i (number-sequence 0 10000))

      (flx-process-cache (uuid) cache))))

    ;;; ⇒ (0.62035 1 0.05461100000000041)

```



So if you have a modern machine, I encourage you to add the following:



```lisp

(setq gc-cons-threshold 20000000)

```



to your init file.



[Screencast showing rationale and ido workflow]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_swuJ1RuMgk

[Helm]: https://github.com/emacs-helm/helm