Helm: Make use of `helm-buffers-sort-transformer` customizable

[Fuco1]

With no narrowing, helm-buffers-list lists the buffers in LRU order. However, as soon as I narrow, it sorts them by buffer name length. I consider this an anti-feature: I usually want to jump to the least recently used, not to the shortest buffer matching a pattern.

Is there any reason at all to re-sort the candidates?

[thierryvolpiatto]

Matus Goljer [email protected] writes:

Is there any reason at all to re-sort the candidates?

Because I think this is really handy.

Thierry
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[Fuco1]

Can you explain the reasoning? I don't see any advantage in bringing buffers with short names to the front, they are no more relevant to the search query than any other buffer. Recently used buffers, however, are relevant because they are being used and they should be accessed in the fastest way possible.

[tuhdo]

@Fuco1 I think it is because it is used for simple ranking. The shortest candidates have the highest match to the provided Helm patterns. Since helm-buffers-list can do fuzzy matching, such ranking is relevant. However I agree with you that we should leave the buffer ordering intact with most recently used buffers at the top. No sorting, only filtering.

@thierryvolpiatto probably we can have an option to disable buffer sorting and leave the order as it is?

[thierryvolpiatto]

Matus Goljer [email protected] writes:

Can you explain the reasoning? I don't see any advantage in bringing
buffers with short names to the front, they are no more relevant to
the search query than any other buffer. Recently used buffers,
however, are relevant because they are being used and they should be
accessed in the fastest way possible.

Your more recent buffers are on top at startup, if you search a buffer,
it is because it is not on top, and the search is regexp based, I don't
see why we should sort by recent usage, i.e if I type helm in pattern I
want helm.el popup on top, not the helm-something.el buffer I used 10mn
ago and I have finished with it.
For your particular usage, (It seem you don't like helm-buffers-list) I
suggest you turn on helm-mode on and use C-x b.

You can consider this as Wontfix.

Thierry
Get my Gnupg key:
gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys 59F29997

[Yevgnen]

I think when one use helm-recentf, he may want to find the most recent file that contains the prefix he typed. At least for helm-recentf. For other commands like helm-find-files, the matching of the pattern is more important, of course.

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