I am new to emacs (using Spacemacs with Evil and Ivy). This is how I open a file: SPC f f (counsel-find-file)
Find file:
I entered path of file. Ivy matches words one directory at a time. But drilling down is getting tiresome.
Is there a way Ivy can look into a directory to match file names a few levels down?
Two ways to find a file name deep in a directory, without having to drill down:
SPC SPC counsel-file-jump lists all files below parent directory. But first use SPC f f (counsel-find-file) to select a parent directory.
SPC f L (counsel-locate) lists all matching directory and file names from Linux root.
Don't know about ivy, but at least the default completion in Emacs lets you do that if you know how many levels down you want to go:
C-x C-f */*/filena TAB
will look for files whose name starts with filena 2 levels down from where you are. I've had a todo-item to add support for ** for many years now. Hopefully someone will beat me to it.
If you use Icicles then you can match any parts of an absolute file name. It doesn't matter how deep the file is, and there is no need to know how deep it is.
If you have files with the same name at different parts of the file system then you can match some part(s) of their ancestor directories. If you don't then, if you want, you can match just the (leaf) relative file name itself.
See File-Name Input.
counsel-file-jumpuseful and are running a Un*x OS, you may also like to try the built-in commandlocateand itscounselcounterpart,counsel-locate, though these are a bit more scattergun than the former.counsel-file-jumpby default completes files only under the currentdefault-directory. Are you sure you are in the expected parent directory before invoking it? Alternatively, the command prompts the user for a different directory when invoked with a prefix argument.(ivy-read "File: " (directory-files-recursively default-directory ""))starts anivycompletion session with all files under the currentdefault-directory(I modified the code slightly to make it more idiomatic). As it stands, however, it will merely return the selected completion candidate and not actually read any files. I recommend reading the Ivy Manual for more information.