You know the file is called handlers.py. You have no idea which folder it is in. Vim has had an answer for thirty years, and Vim 9 made it fuzzy.

Here is a problem you hit on day one of any real project.

You know the file is called handlers.py. You have no idea which folder it lives in. So you start typing :e and then you are guessing. Was it src/? api/? And when you guess wrong you do not even get an error, you get an empty buffer with the wrong name, which is worse.

The usual answer is to install a fuzzy finder plugin. That is a fine answer. But there is a much smaller one first, and almost nobody switches it on.

Try it before you configure it

:find handlers.py

E345: Can't find file "handlers.py" in path

Fair enough. Vim only looked in the folder you are standing in.

One line

set path+=**

path is the list of places :find is allowed to look. ** means every folder below this one, however deep it goes.

Now the same command:

:find handlers.py

Opens src/api/handlers.py. You never typed a folder name.

It completes, too. Type :find rou and press Tab and Vim finishes it: routes.py. Add set wildmenu and you get a proper menu of the matches.

That single line in your config quietly changes how you open files.

Making it fuzzy

:find still wants the name roughly right. What you actually want is what every modern editor calls a fuzzy finder: type a few letters from anywhere in the path, get the file.

Here is the part most people do not know. Vim 9 added an option called findfunc, which lets you replace what :find searches with your own function. Vim also ships matchfuzzy(), which ranks a list of strings against a pattern.

Put the two together and you have a fuzzy file finder in five lines:

set findfunc=Find
func! Find(arg, _)
  let files = filter(expand("**", 1, 1), "!isdirectory(v:val)")
  return empty(a:arg) ? files : matchfuzzy(files, a:arg)
endfunc

Reading it out loud:

• expand("**", 1, 1) walks the whole tree below you
• filter(...) throws away the directories, because you cannot open a folder
• if you have typed nothing, hand back everything so the menu shows the lot
• otherwise, give the list and your text to matchfuzzy and let it rank them

Save it, and load it without restarting:

:w | so %

The result

Now type four letters that do not sit next to each other in any filename:

:find thand opened tests/test_handlers.py. The t came from tests, the hand from handlers, across a folder boundary. Not a prefix. No wildcard.

:find srout lands on src/api/routes.py the same way.

That is a fuzzy file finder, in five lines, with nothing installed. Vim’s own manual documents the pattern under :h fuzzy-file-picker.

One warning that will save you an hour

There is an option called wildoptions=fuzzy and it looks like the obvious thing to reach for. It is not. Vim’s documentation says so plainly:

Currently fuzzy matching based completion is not supported for file and directory names and instead wildcard expansion is used.

So it will not fuzzy match filenames. That is why the recipe above uses findfunc instead. If you have tried wildoptions=fuzzy and wondered why nothing felt fuzzy, that is why.

And when you do not know the name at all

Sometimes you only know something written inside the file:

:vimgrep /handle_create/ **/*.py
:copen

:vimgrep searches the contents of every matching file and fills the quickfix list. :copen shows it as a list you can walk. :cclose puts it away.

The whole toolkit

Four things, no plugins, and it works on any machine you ssh into.

This is one lecture from Vim & Neovim Mastery, Build a Modern IDE From Scratch, where every command is typed on camera in a real terminal, including this one.