Matchmaker

Theme

Input & data sources ​

Skeleton — structure plus verified facts; full prose to be written.

Piped input ​

  • When stdin is not a terminal, Matchmaker reads items from stdin (the default command is skipped).
  • input_separator (start.input_separator, absolute alias n) chooses the character that separates items; the default config uses \0 so filenames with spaces/newlines are preserved.
  • skip_invalid_lines controls whether lines that fail UTF-8 parsing are skipped (true) or raise an error (false).

Populating commands ​

  • start.command runs when stdin is a terminal (or --no-read forces it).
  • start.additional_commands provides extra commands that can be cycled through with the ReloadNext / ReloadPrev actions.
  • When multiple commands exist, MM_INDEX reports which one is active (0-indexed); setting _MM_INDEX in the environment selects one.
  • A per-command object form supports a custom separator overriding input_separator for that command.

Context lines ​

  • -C <N> (context) rolls N lines around each match into the item, so results show surrounding context and previews/templates can reference it.

Trailing arguments ​

  • Arguments after -- are passed to the populating command and are also available to templates as {$0}, {$1}, {$n} (see Templates).
  • Warning: trailing arguments are ignored when input is piped.

Output ​

  • output_separator (string, alias os) joins printed selections.
  • output_template (alias ot/output) is the template used to print results; it is exclusive with on_accept.
  • on_accept runs a template as a command on accepted items.

To write ​

  • Streaming/async feeding of huge inputs.
  • Environment variables available to the populating command.
  • Behavior when the command exits non-zero.