CLI Search (lff)

Lertaro includes a lightweight and highly efficient command-line companion named lff (Lertaro Fuzzy Finder) — an interactive fuzzy finder built specifically for terminal power users and shell scripts. It communicates via local named pipes with the running Lertaro App to reuse the in-memory index tree without rescanning drives.

1. Why Choose lff

• Shared Index, Zero I/O Latency: Unlike fzf or find that crawl disk sectors from scratch on every run, lff queries Lertaro's multimillion-item memory index tree in sub-milliseconds.
• Identical Search Syntax: Inherits Lertaro's fuzzy jump matching, Chinese pinyin aliases, and modifier operators (see Search Syntax).
• Fast Fail-Safe: Automatically detects whether Lertaro App is running. If not, it prints a clear error message to stderr and exits immediately without hanging your terminal.

2. Installation & PATH Setup

lff.exe ships directly inside the Lertaro package:

• Installer: Check Add lff CLI search tool to PATH in the setup wizard to make lff accessible anywhere in your terminal.
• Portable Edition: Manually add the unzipped folder path to your user or system PATH environment variable.

NOTE

After updating PATH, open a new terminal window for the change to take effect; existing shell sessions will not reflect environment changes automatically.

3. Interactive UI & Keybindings

Run lff in any terminal to open the full-screen interactive interface:

lff

Keybindings Cheat Sheet

Key	Description
Type Characters	Filters search results in real time with fuzzy jump matching.
↑ / ↓	Moves the highlight up / down.
Page Up / Page Down	Scrolls up / down by full page.
← / →	Moves the cursor horizontally within the search input bar.
Tab	Toggles selection/mark on the highlighted row (marked items display a * badge).
Enter	Outputs all marked paths (or the highlighted path if none marked) to stdout and exits.
Esc or Ctrl+C	Exits cleanly without outputting anything.

4. Non-interactive Search

Use --search when a script needs search results without opening the interactive interface:

# Print up to 20 matching paths
lff --search "report"

# Sort the complete result set first, then keep the first 50 results
lff --search "report" --limit 50

# Restrict the search to files under a directory
lff --search "report" --files --path "D:\Documents"

# Restrict the search to folders
lff --search "report" --folders

# Print one compact JSON array with result metadata
lff --search "report" --json

The complete result set is sorted before --limit is applied. Without --limit, at most 20 results are printed. Plain output writes one path per line; --json writes one JSON array rather than NDJSON. Each JSON item includes the name, path, directory flag, drive, attributes, size, and creation, modification, and access timestamps. This mode uses the same search syntax as the interactive interface and requires the Lertaro App to be running.

--files and --folders cannot be used together. --path limits the search to the specified directory and its descendants.

5. Pre-filling Queries & Pipeline Input

You can provide an initial search term directly via command-line arguments or standard input:

# Via argument
lff report

# Via standard input pipeline
echo report | lff

Both open the interactive TUI pre-populated with report as the initial filter, allowing you to refine the search or press Enter directly to confirm.

6. Multi-selection & Batch Output

Press Tab to mark items. Marked selections persist even when you change your search query.

You can search for doc to mark several Word documents, clear the query, search pdf to mark several reports, and press Enter — lff outputs all marked paths across queries line-by-line to standard output.

7. Shell Scripting Examples

lff renders its TUI directly into the console buffer without polluting the standard output stream. Only the final confirmed path strings are written to stdout, making it ideal for piping into other tools:

PowerShell Workflows

# Open the selected file in VS Code
code (lff)

# Assign chosen directory to a variable and navigate to it
$target = lff; cd $target

# Pipe results as FileInfo objects down the pipeline
lff | Get-Item | Select-Object Name, Length, LastWriteTime

CMD / Batch Workflows

:: Process selected paths line-by-line in a for loop
for /f "delims=" %i in ('lff') do code "%i"

8. Limitations & Intentional Choices

• Requires Foreground App: lff relies on the running Lertaro App instance for querying; it does not perform standalone indexing.
• No GUI Previews: Optimized exclusively for fast terminal piping. For interactive media/rich text previews, use Lertaro's GUI Actions & Preview.