feature request: support escaping of displayed elements

[calestyo]

• I have read through the manual page (man fzf)
• I have the latest version of fzf
• I have searched through the existing issues

Feature Request

Hey.

I with --read0 one can read NUL-delimited items (which is great) and right now they're even displayed in a fancy way.

Assuming e.g. a directory with the following subdirectories:

$ ls -1
'a'$'\n''b'
'c'$'\t''d'
'e'$'\r''f'
'g h'
'i'$'\n''j'
'k'$'\n\n'
strange-files
--foo
'\n'
𑙣𑙤𑙦

Executing:

$ find . -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 -type d -print0 | fzf --read0

gives:

 ./k␊␊              
  ./strange-files   
  ./i␊j             
> ./e␍f             
  ./c     d         
  ./g h             
  ./\n              
  ./𑙣𑙤𑙦          
  ./a␊b             
  ./--foo           
  10/10 ────────────
>                   

Notice the unicode replacement characters like ␊ (U+240A SYMBOL FOR LINE FEED) that are used.

While this looks indeed nice and is probably a good default for most cases, it would IMO be even nicer if one could specify a quotation style, similar to ls’ --quoting-style=-option, but specifically for displaying/searching purposes.

So that the output would be given like this:

  𑙣𑙤𑙦             
  '\n'               
  --foo              
  strange-files      
> 'k'$'\n\n'         
  'i'$'\n''j'        
  'g h'              
  'e'$'\r''f'        
  'c'$'\t''d'        
  'a'$'\n''b'        
  10/10 ──────────   
>                    

The idea is, that this would be really only for display (and searching) purposes, i.e. when selecting e.g '\n' it would still return a literal newline.

One benefit of this might be, that the elements are easier to read (e.g. ␊ is quite small on a terminal). Another, that one can search for those characters (typing e.g. ␊ is not so easy via the keyboard).

Cheers,
Chris.