1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
|
## Status
This project is more than a year old now. Lots of bugs have been worked out.
It appears some people use it on a regular basis.
## Screencast
Screencast showing rationale and ido workflow: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_swuJ1RuMgk>
## Installation
## Usage
The sorting algorithm is a balance between word beginnings (abbreviation) and
contiguous matches (substring).
The longer the substring match, the higher it scores. This maps well to how
we think about matching.
In general, it's better form queries with only lowercase characters so
the sorting algorithm can do something smart.
For example, if you have these files:
projects/clojure-mode/clojure-mode.el
projects/prelude/core/prelude-mode.el
If the search term was *pre-mode*, you might expect "prelude-mode.el" to rank
higher. However because the substring match "re-mode" is so long,
"clojure-mode.el" actually scores higher.
**Here, using *premode* would give the expected order.** Notice that the
"-" actually prevents the algorithm from helping you.
### uppercase letters
Flx always folds lowercase letters to match uppercase. However, you can use uppercase letters for force flx to only match uppercase.
This is similar to Emacs' case-folding. The difference is mixing in uppercase letters **does not disable** folding.
### completing file names
Matches within the basepath score higher.
## ido support
Install the Debian package elpa-flx-ido and add this to your init file
and *flx* match will be enabled for ido.
```lisp
(require 'flx-ido)
(ido-mode 1)
(ido-everywhere 1)
(flx-ido-mode 1)
;; disable ido faces to see flx highlights.
(setq ido-enable-flex-matching t)
(setq ido-use-faces nil)
```
If you don't want to use the `flx`'s highlights you can turn them off like this:
```lisp
(setq flx-ido-use-faces nil)
```
### Flx uses a complex matching heuristics which can be slow for large collections
Customize `flx-ido-threshold` to change the collection size above which flx
will revert to flex matching.
As soon as the collection is narrowed below `flx-ido-threshold`, flx will
kick in again.
As a point of reference for a 2.3 GHz quad-core i7 processor, a value of
`10000` still provides a reasonable completion experience.
## Helm support
[Helm][] is not supported yet. There is a demo showing how it could work, but I'm
still working through how to integrate it into helm.
The Helm demo shows the score of the top 20 matches.
## Memory Usage
The `flx` algorithm willingly sacrifices memory usage for speed.
For 10k file names, about 10 MB of memory will be used to speed up future
matching. This memory is never released to keep the match speed fast.
So far with modern computers, this feels like a reasonable design decision.
It may change in future.
## GC Optimization
Emacs's garbage collector is fairly primitive stop the world type. GC time can
contribute significantly to the run-time of computation that allocates and
frees a lot of memory.
Consider the following example:
```lisp
(defun uuid ()
(format "%08x-%08x-%08x-%08x"
(random (expt 16 4))
(random (expt 16 4))
(random (expt 16 4))
(random (expt 16 4))))
(benchmark-run 1
(let ((cache (flx-make-filename-cache)))
(dolist (i (number-sequence 0 10000))
(flx-process-cache (uuid) cache))))
;;; ⇒ (0.899678 9 0.33650300000000044)
```
This means that roughly 30% of time is spent just doing garbage-collection.
`flx` can benefit significantly from garbage collection tuning.
By default Emacs will initiate GC every 0.76 MB allocated (`gc-cons-threshold`
== 800000). If we increase this to 20 MB (`gc-cons-threshold` == 20000000)
we get:
````lisp
(benchmark-run 1
(setq gc-cons-threshold 20000000)
(let ((cache (flx-make-filename-cache)))
(dolist (i (number-sequence 0 10000))
(flx-process-cache (uuid) cache))))
;;; ⇒ (0.62035 1 0.05461100000000041)
```
So if you have a modern machine, I encourage you to add the following:
```lisp
(setq gc-cons-threshold 20000000)
```
to your init file.
[Helm]: https://github.com/emacs-helm/helm
|