Exa: An alternative to Ls
the.exa.website
Exa: An alternative to Ls
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Re: Exa: An alternative to Ls
#2> The computer is no longer the bottleneck.
High load average, full swap, memory leaks, those things still happen today.
> exa, by default, runs the stat system call on every file it encounters.
99% of ls's use case are: show me the files in this folder.
What happened to KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) and the UNIX philosophy (do only one thing, but do it well)?
> 256-colour terminals are everywhere.
Laughs with Windows Terminal.
> ls is still there if you need it.
Thank you, I will keep using it. Also "ls" for "list" is straightforward, what does "exa" even mean?
There is a reason why those programs have not changed in the last 50 years: they work, they do one thing, they do it well, nobody ask them to do more.
Re: Exa: An alternative to Ls
#3I have nothing against exa, but the two examples in this post are are not correct for any sort of recent system.
> Here’s an example. exa, by default, runs the stat system call on every file it encounters.
So does "ls" ... for at least last 20 years. Just checked on random Ubuntu system I had -- executables and dirs are highlighted with different colors.
> exa makes heavy use of colours, treating them as opt-out rather than opt-in: it will highlight files and data differently based on their type or meaning.
So does ls -- I see colors in default install. Yes, you need an environment variable to enable this, but all the modern distros set this anyway.
So based on that page, it seems that the only thing that EXA does differently is that it upgrades ls's 16 color palette to 256 colors.
I think they need stronger motivation.
Re: Exa: An alternative to Ls
#4> The computer is no longer the bottleneck. High load average, full swap, memory leaks, those things still happen today. > exa, by default, runs the stat system call on every file it encounters. 99% of ls's use case are: show me the files in this folder. What happened to KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) and the UNIX philosophy (do only one thing, but do it well)? > 256-colour terminals are everywhere. Laughs with Window…
>Laughs with Windows Terminal
The new windows terminal has truecolor.
Re: Exa: An alternative to Ls
#5I like exa. Been using it for a couple months now.
Re: Exa: An alternative to Ls
#6This page doesn’t actually list any features or explain why you should use exa instead of ls. The homepage [0] is more useful in this regard.
Re: Exa: An alternative to Ls
#7I have nothing against exa, but the two examples in this post are are not correct for any sort of recent system. > Here’s an example. exa, by default, runs the stat system call on every file it encounters. So does "ls" ... for at least last 20 years. Just checked on random Ubuntu system I had -- executables and dirs are highlighted with different colors. > exa makes heavy use of colours, treating them as opt-out rath…
ls doesn't do colours by default, but a lot of distros alias `ls` to `ls --color=auto` so it seems that way.
Re: Exa: An alternative to Ls
#8I have nothing against exa, but the two examples in this post are are not correct for any sort of recent system. > Here’s an example. exa, by default, runs the stat system call on every file it encounters. So does "ls" ... for at least last 20 years. Just checked on random Ubuntu system I had -- executables and dirs are highlighted with different colors. > exa makes heavy use of colours, treating them as opt-out rath…
There's a features page on their website that shows some more tricks it can do, like smarter file type colouring, generating a tree view and showing the git status of files.
I'm still not entirely convinced that it's a must-have, but it's more than just ls with fancy colours.
Personally, I'd much rather have seen an output format like JSON as a feature instead, so you can do some easier scripting through exa and jq. I'm sure there are other tools out there to serve thst purpose, though.
Re: Exa: An alternative to Ls
#9I've been using lsd[0] as my ls replacement for a while. I like that it has a config file for defaults, so I don't have to change a bunch of aliases when setting up a new system.
Re: Exa: An alternative to Ls
#10> The computer is no longer the bottleneck. High load average, full swap, memory leaks, those things still happen today. > exa, by default, runs the stat system call on every file it encounters. 99% of ls's use case are: show me the files in this folder. What happened to KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) and the UNIX philosophy (do only one thing, but do it well)? > 256-colour terminals are everywhere. Laughs with Window…
>what does "exa" even mean?
Examine