Open editor only for text files

[limaceous-bushwhacker]

How can I use fzf to open an editor only if the selected file is a text file? If it's not a text file, I want it to go back to fzf for another selection. Additionally, once the file is opened in the editor, I want the script to exit when the editor is closed.

[LangLangBart]

One idea is to use the transform¹ action to check if the file meets certain requirements. The
check below has been used by the maintainer in one of their scripts² to verify if it's a text
file.

[[ -f {} && ! $(file --dereference --mime -- {}) =~ binary ]]

If the file meets the requirements, perform the desired action, such as become:vim …³, or do
nothing.

Tip

The placeholder, for instance {}, needs to be escaped in the echo statement for transform
actions. Otherwise it will cause issues with files that contain spaces in their names.

✅ echo 'become:vim \{}'

❌ echo 'become:vim {}'

fzf --bind "enter:transform:[[ -f {} && ! \$(file --dereference --mime -- {}) =~ binary ]] &&
  echo 'become:vim \{}' ||
  echo 'change-header:I am not a text file'"

Footnotes

1. CHANGELOG.md 0.45.0 ↩

2. fzf/bin/fzf-preview.sh ↩

3. CHANGELOG.md 0.38.0 ↩

[limaceous-bushwhacker]

This is amazing, ty! I don't fully understand what's going on here since I'm not familiar with transform and become syntax but thanks for introducing me to these.