How to tame vim's ":find" command

Say, I have files foo.js and bar.css in my project. There is a ":find" command in vim, which find files, matching string. But this command, alas, has some limitations. For example, if I launch this way - "vim", or even this way - "vim ." - there开发者_开发知识库's nothing to be find in js subdirectory. But if I launch vim this way - "vim js/any_file_other_than_foo.js", then calling ":find foo.js" works pretty well.

Since it is not intuitive (i'm working in the same directory, "pwd" returns the same path), my first question is - can anybody explain how to circumvent this issue? And, even broader, is there any way to type something like find foo - and open first file, which name matches pattern foo.

thanks in advance.

You could try

:e[dit] **/*foo* and then press 'tab' to move to the first match.

the ** is a directory globbing pattern, while * is character matching.

If you were so inclined, you could write a simple fuzzy finder command, for more information you can check out the vim tips wiki: http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Find_files_in_subdirectories

Vim's :find works by searching each directory in the path variable (and ignores pwd). By default, it does not search recursively. That's why find is only working for you when you open a js file. The '.' in path refers to the directory for the current file -- not pwd.

You can change path to include your desired directories:

set path+=$PROJECT/js

See :help path.

One of the magic bits to use is to add ** to a path to search that path recursively:

" search recursively in my project
set path+=$PROJECT/**
" search recursively from the current file's directory
set path+=./**

See :help file-searching for more magic.

A nice plugin that accomplishes a similar effect is Command-T.

The Command-T plug-in provides an extremely fast, intuitive mechanism for opening files with a minimal number of keystrokes. It's named "Command-T" because it is inspired by the "Go to File" window bound to Command-T in TextMate.

Files are selected by typing characters that appear in their paths, and are ordered by an algorithm which knows that characters that appear in certain locations (for example, immediately after a path separator) should be given more weight.should be given more weight.

Here is a screencast of Command-T in action.