navigations as in visidata

[nnako]

Hi,

I spent some time exploring this promising tool. One thing that bothers me is that just some hotkeys have been kept from your base visidata (which is mine as well). Some habe kept an approximate function like

• in VisiData a / will search the current column based on a given regex expression
• in dv, it searches for the value below the cursor and adds this search to the previous search results

So, when using dv the user would have to learn all key bindings (as they seem to be static), hoping they would remain stable and are well thought through (like they appeared to be in visidata.

Is there a deliberate concept behind the choice of keybinding for dv? Would you explain it, so it would become easier for newbies to grasp and memorize?

[need47]

Thanks for the comment — that’s a fair concern. I did intentionally follow VisiData’s keybinding philosophy in parts, though not every binding is identical.

My underlying concept is to group related actions by physical key pairs on the keyboard. For example, \ and | share the same key:

\ searches for the value under the cursor (the currently selected cell) in the current column.

| prompts for a regex and performs a regex-based search — this matches VisiData’s behavior.

Conceptually, these two operations are closely related: one is a quick, literal search shortcut for the other. I use the same design principle elsewhere. For instance, / searches for the cursor value in the current column, while ? prompts for a regex input; again, these two share the same physical key.

The goal is to make related operations discoverable and easier to memorize by grouping them ergonomically, even if that means some bindings differ from VisiData.