Search scrollback

[mitchellh]

A major missing feature is the ability to search scrollback, i.e. cmd+f on Mac, ctrl+F on Linux. This issue can be implemented in multiple steps, not just one giant PR:

• Core search functionality in src/terminal (Naive search internals (core only) #2885)
• Make core search work simultaneously to PageList read/write to allow multi-threading
• Implement multi-threaded search, including data modeling for notifications of matches
• Search UI, glue in apprt

We can also support search only in certain modes as long as the apprt glue is all there for someone to come along and finish it up. For example, only macOS, Linux+GTK, etc.

[amadeus]

Would be cool to fake what terminal emulator in vim does -- where you can pause the existing session ctrl+w N, and move around the buffer with vim commands for searching and highlighting, then press i to return back into the session. Here's an example video (not saying the commands should be the same to pull this off, just using that as an example):

CleanShot.2023-07-07.at.00.09.42.mp4

[andrewrk]

Looking forward to this feature - I missed it yesterday when I had a lot of output from a command and wanted to search for the word "fail".

[vancluever]

Kitty has a a pretty novel approach here that I've actually really enjoyed - ctrl+shift+h actually sends the scrollback to a pager (e.g. less). I've found this much less confusing in comparison to others (like iTerm's).

This also lets you take advantage of the pager's features and can be tailored to a certain user's preference without minimal load on our side.

[gpanders]

Kitty has a a pretty novel approach here that I've actually really enjoyed - ctrl+shift+h actually sends the scrollback to a pager (e.g. less). I've found this much less confusing in comparison to others (like iTerm's).

FYI Ghostty has this too, bound to Cmd-Shift-J on macOS and Ctrl-Shift-J on Linux.

It works slightly differently than Kitty in that it puts the temp file path to the captured scrollback on the command line rather than opening it in a pager directly.

[benwaffle]

Once we have search, searching via regex would be really nice to have. I've been finding myself search for exit [^0] a lot recently.

[mattpolzin]

Kitty has a a pretty novel approach here that I've actually really enjoyed - ctrl+shift+h actually sends the scrollback to a pager (e.g. less). I've found this much less confusing in comparison to others (like iTerm's).

FYI Ghostty has this too, bound to Cmd-Shift-J on macOS and Ctrl-Shift-J on Linux.

It works slightly differently than Kitty in that it puts the temp file path to the captured scrollback on the command line rather than opening it in a pager directly.

One nice thing about Kitty's implementation is you can even use it as a program is actively running and potentially still outputting text; new text doesn't automatically get fed into your pager but you don't need to wait until a command finishes to use the pager functionality.

I'm not immediately sure if that would be equivalent in behavior to

1. Pause current execution
2. Send to background
3. Open ghostty's scrollback file in pager
4. On quit, bring task to foreground if still running

[pjz]

I'm used to screen/tmux behavior here: ctrl-A,[ puts you into 'scrollback mode' where you can then use the keyboard (vi-keys) to scroll up and down, and then even hilight some text and put it into a clipboard where you can then paste it with ctrl-A,].

I don't think it updates the buffer while scrolling, though... but I don't see why it couldn't just extend it downward.

[yankcrime]

Personally I'd rather this stuck to OS-native conventions for search functionality as well as look and feel. I don't think implementation-specific idiosyncrasies are a good idea since a lot of folks will have differing preferences and expectations.

The implementation along the lines of what's provided by Terminal.app or iTerm would be fine since that easily lets you search the scrollback buffer in a way that doesn't affect any additional output.