Vifm: A Vim-like file manager

(github.com)

40 points | by surrTurr 411 days ago

6 comments

  • spccdt 410 days ago
    I love vifm! It honors the vim philosophy — it’s fast, configurable, and keyboard driven. I have it integrated with vim so that when I press “-“ it toggles a directory view. So seamless that it’s hard to tell that they’re separate apps.
  • Valodim 411 days ago
    This is one of those projects that could really use a "how does it compare to" section in the readme.

    The number one question anyone who already uses a similar tool will have is, "How is it better or worse than whatever I'm already using?"

    • Linux-Fan 410 days ago
      I like using vi-style keybindings for various applications.

      Hence, for file managing, I had been using `vifm` for a long time and then discovered `ranger`. I switched to it due to its advanced preview capabilities and the default interface being closer to my taste.

      However, said preview function (and also other functions) sometimes crashed and I recall some strange behaviour of copy operations in ranger when symlinks were involved (?). In any case, I switched back to vifm for stability reasons and have been effectively using it for years.

      What I had been missing from the console file managers was a "copy & paste between windows" option. With vifm, I implemented it as a patch getting nice assistance from vifm's developer xaizek. This resulted in the (back-then) new feature `syncregs` which I have kept using ever since. Not sure if ranger came to offer something similar in the meantime :)

      YMMV

    • dogline 410 days ago
      That's what I just came here to the HN comments for.
  • philonoist 410 days ago
    You can take advantage of hybrid user interface with Win-vind you know[0]

    [0]https://github.com/pit-ray/win-vind

  • DavideNL 410 days ago
    I want to like this thing, but i always get the feeling that 1 or 2 accidental wrong keypresses could result in total chaos because i’ll have no idea what just happened to my files/folders…

    (currently using Ranger)

    • heyoni 410 days ago
      That’s probably why emacs dired has you mark the files for deletion and execute deletion separately.
  • sbergjohansen 410 days ago
    vifm allows you to rename multiple files in bulk by opening a temporary file containing one filename per line in actual vim.

    Edit: apparently ranger has this feature, too.

  • gbraad 410 days ago
    Ranger for me, similar but in my opinion much better.
    • arunix 410 days ago
      What makes Ranger better?