Since I now keep updated directories for tags and titles in my notes, I can just straight up call fzf instead of that complicated mechanism I was using for browsing notes by title and tag before.

I have a script I run on saving notes (right after committing them) that updates the sym links. Described better in browsing by tags and titles.

These titles and tags are only not up to date when I sync my notes to a system. I could add a git hook, but I'm fine with just running my script once.

All of the following commands assume my notes live at T383838~/messy/. Which is the case for all of my notes.

(cd ~/messy/ ; fzf --walker-root=meta)

That can be a bit to type, so an alias is in order:

alias nnames='(cd ~/messy/ ; fzf --walker-root=meta)'

T282828

Tff7b72(Tffa657cd ~/messy/ Tb4b4b4; nvim Ta5d6ff"Tff7b72$(fzf --walker-rootTff7b72=metaTff7b72)Ta5d6ff"Tff7b72)

But what about other editors?

T282828

Tff7b72(Tffa657cd ~/messy/ Tb4b4b4; Ta5d6ff"Tffd700${Te6edf3EDITORTffd700}Ta5d6ff" Ta5d6ff"Tff7b72$(fzf --walker-rootTff7b72=metaTff7b72)Ta5d6ff"Tff7b72)

And again, that's too much to type, so an alias:

T282828

Tffa657alias Te6edf3nedTff7b72=Ta5d6ff'(cd ~/messy/ ; "${EDITOR}" "$(fzf --walker-root=meta)")'

This is basically telescope! And it's almost verbatim from the manual page, but replace cat with bat:

T282828

Tff7b72(Tffa657cd messy/ Tb4b4b4; nvim Ta5d6ff"Tff7b72$(Tffea00\

fzf --margin T79c0ff5% --padding T79c0ff5% Tffea00\

--border --preview Ta5d6ff'bat --color=always {}' Tffea00\

--color bg:#222222,preview-bg:#333333Tff7b72)Ta5d6ff"Tff7b72)

More alias!

T282828

Tffa657alias Te6edf3pedTff7b72=Ta5d6ff'(cd messy/ ; nvim "$(\

fzf --margin 5% --padding 5% \

--border --preview "bat --color=always {}" \

--color bg:#222222,preview-bg:#333333)")'

And here's an absolutely massive PNG that shows the output from that when I look for the 3ds tag in my notes by trailing the desired tag name with a slash.

This uses the script below, can be run on NixOS with T383838chmod +x on it, or any system that has T383838fzf and T383838bemenu already installed via T383838bashing it.

This prompts for input and lets the user type T383838#tag and then T383838search-term or just T383838search-term and then launches an editor on the resulting file name.

#! /usr/bin/env nix-shell

#! nix-shell -i bash -p fzf bemenu

##

# This script assumes that it is located in a subdirectory under the project

# root and that all notes are located in a notes directory below the project.

# (ie notes in ../notes and this script is somewhere like scripts/)

set -e

WHERE=$(readlink -f ${BASH_SOURCE[0]})

NOTES=$(readlink -f ${WHERE%/*}/../notes)

MY_BOPS="--binding vim"

export BEMENUOPTS="${BEMENUOPTS:-${MY_BOPS}}"

export BEMENUBACKEND="${BEMENUBACKEND:-curses}"

##

# Display all note titles.

showalltitles() (

grep -hPo '(?<=^title: ).' "${NOTES}"/.mu

)

##

# Display tags from all notes.

showalltags() (

# does not support yaml arrays, just single line format

grep -hPo '(?<=^tags: \[).' "${NOTES}"/.mu \

| sed 's/,/\n/g' \

| sed 's/^\( *\)/#/g' \

| sed 's/\]$//g' \

| sort -u

)

##

# Reads from stdin and returns a list of files that

# contain the specified title or the specified tag

# if the string begins with a #.

normalize() (

local TITLE TAG

while read -r TITLE ; do

COUNT=$((COUNT+1))

if [[ "${TITLE}" =~ ^#(.*) ]] ; then

TAG=${BASH_REMATCH[1]}

grep -l "^tags: .\<${TAG}\>" "${NOTES}"/.mu

else

grep -l "^title: ${TITLE}$" "${NOTES}"/*.mu

fi

done

)

declare -a FILES

FILES=("" "")

while [ "${#FILES[@]}" -gt 1 ] ; do

if [ -z "${FILES[0]}" ] ; then

mapfile -t FILES < <(

(

showalltitles

showalltags

) | bemenu | normalize

)

else

mapfile -t FILES < <(

(

for FILE in "${FILES[@]}" ; do

grep -hPo '(?<=^title: ).*' "${FILE}"

done

)| bemenu | normalize

)

fi

done

if [ -n "${FILES[0]}" ] ; then

"${EDITOR}" "${FILES[0]}"

fi

Tags: index

created: 2025-02-09

(re)generated: 2026-07-17