Command-Line Search (slf)

SwiftList also ships a small command-line companion, slf — an fzf-style fuzzy finder that searches through the same index the App itself already maintains, instead of duplicating any of that setup. It's for anyone who lives in a terminal and wants SwiftList's search (fuzzy matching, pinyin aliasing, network drives, everything) available there too, not just in the search windows.

slf needs the SwiftList App to already be running — it talks to the App over a local, per-user pipe rather than re-scanning anything itself. If the App isn't running, slf fails fast with an error on stderr instead of hanging.

Setting it up

slf.exe is installed alongside the App. Check Add the slf command-line search tool to PATH on the installer's task selection page to make it runnable as slf from any terminal — this adds SwiftList's install folder to your system PATH. Open a new terminal window afterward; one already open when you installed won't pick up the change.

If you skipped that option, you can still run it directly from wherever SwiftList is installed.

Basic usage

slf

opens an interactive picker: type to fuzzy-filter, exactly like the App's own search — including pinyin-alias matching for Chinese filenames (see Search Syntax).

Key	Action
Type	Filter results
↑ / ↓	Move the highlight
Page Up / Page Down	Jump a page at a time
← / →	Move the text cursor within the query
Tab	Toggle-select the highlighted result (marked rows show *)
Enter	Print the selected path(s) — or just the highlighted one, if nothing's marked — and exit
Esc / Ctrl+C	Exit without printing anything

Pre-filling the query

slf report

and

echo report | slf

both open already filtered to report. Either way this only pre-fills the query box and starts the same search typing it would — it never auto-selects or auto-prints a result on its own, so you still navigate and press Enter/Tab yourself.

Selecting multiple results

Tab marks or unmarks the highlighted row. Marked rows persist even after you change the query — so you can search for one file, mark it, search for something else, mark that too, and so on. The status line shows how many are currently marked. Pressing Enter while anything is marked prints every marked path, one per line, regardless of what's currently highlighted.

Using the result in another command

slf's interactive picker is drawn directly to the console, never through the normal input/output streams — the only thing that ever goes to stdout is the final selected path(s), one per line, printed on Enter. That's what lets its output compose with the usual shell techniques for capturing another command's result.

PowerShell:

code (slf)
$path = slf; code $path

cmd.exe (no built-in command substitution — use for /f):

for /f "delims=" %i in ('slf') do code "%i"

Limitations

• No preview pane — deliberately out of scope, since the App's own Actions Menu & Preview already covers that.
• Requires the SwiftList App to be running; slf doesn't index anything on its own.