This is an extension for the Telescope plugin which implements a picker for the recent files.

The picker presents all files from :h v:oldfiles + the files which have been opened in the current session. There are also a couple of useful options.

How does it differ from:

• Telescope's native :h builtin.oldfiles. Old files in [Neo]vim are saved only when the program is closed. So if you open the file you haven't worked on before, the builtin picker will not show it, which is sometimes quite annoying. This plugin addresses this use case by taking into account all buffers you opened.

• Frecency extension. Frecency is a fancier extension with smart algorithms, and persisting the results to the local database. However, frecency is not recency. This extension is much simpler - the algorithm is as dumb as it can be (whatever opened last is shown last), and there is also no local database to maintain.

With packer.nvim:

-- Required.
use {"nvim-telescope/telescope.nvim"}
-- This extension.
use {"smartpde/telescope-recent-files"}

Once installed, the extension has to be loaded using standard Telescope's API:

-- Load extension.
require("telescope").load_extension("recent_files")

An example of the shortcut to open recent files:

-- Map a shortcut to open the picker.
vim.api.nvim_set_keymap("n", "<Leader><Leader>",
  [[<cmd>lua require('telescope').extensions.recent_files.pick()<CR>]],
  {noremap = true, silent = true})

Extension options can be configured in the Telescope's setup:

require("telescope").setup {
  defaults = {
    -- Your regular Telescope's options.
  },
  extensions = {
    recent_files = {
      -- This extension's options, see below.
    }
  }
}

The extension provides the following options:

• stat_files (default true).

  Defines if the files should be checked for existence before showing in the pickers. When working on remotely mounted filesystems, it is helpful to turn it off in order to eliminate an extra latency when showing the pickers. At the cost of [potentially] showing non-existing files.

• ignore_patterns (default {"/tmp/"}).

  The list of file patterns to ignore in the picker. These are the standard Lua patterns. If you're opening some logs or other temporary files, you can configure the ignore patters in order not to clutter the pickers.

• only_cwd (default false).

  Show only files in the cwd.

• transform_file_path (default function(file_path) return file_path end).

  This is a Lua function to modify the file path for each entry in the pickers, before it gets displayed. If you return nil or "", the file will not be shown. Note that this function does not affect how the file path is displayed, use :h telescope.defaults.path_display for this.

• show_current_file (default false).

  If true, the file opened in the current window will be also shown in the picker. By default, the current file is not displayed as it is already open. But this behavior can be tuned according to one's liking.