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Exa: An alternative to Ls

the.exa.website

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Re: Exa: An alternative to Ls

#31

Post by gizdan »

kkoncevicius wrote: post #21

Main feature here seems to be colors, but GNU `ls` can also color files based on their file extension and also differentiate between pipes, executables, and working and broken links [1]. [1]: https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/html_node/dirc...

It does a lot more than just colours. It has git integrations, a more concise output, built-in tree, grid view, icons (note they're not showing correctly in below output) and much more.

    $ ll
    drwxrwxr-x    - dan 27 Oct 15:12 -I  .idea
    .rw-rw-r--   15 dan  9 Sep 11:44 -N  .tool-versions
    drwxrwxr-x    - dan  9 Sep 11:53 -I  dist
    drwxrwxr-x    - dan 23 Sep 18:53 --  docs
    .rw-rw-r--  376 dan 29 Jun 12:26 -I  some-project.iml
    drwxr-xr-x    - dan 10 Sep 12:28 -I  node_modules
    .rw-rw-r--  301 dan 21 Oct 13:17 -N  override.env
edit: if it wasn't clear, the above output is a subset of the real output.

Re: Exa: An alternative to Ls

#32

Post by idsout »

claytonjy wrote: post #29

I've been loving all the new rust-based CLI tools; you can find a lot of them here [0]. So far I've used ripgrep, fd-find, sd, exa, bat. I care less about speed and more about ease-of-use and beautiful output. Another bonus is standardized tooling between Mac and Linux; little bsd differences have been driving me nuts since I took a job that forced me into a MacBook, but these tools solve that issue and are easy to i…

> little bsd differences have been driving me nuts since I took a job that forced me into a MacBook, but these tools solve that issue and are easy to install with Homebrew.

I'm in the same boat as you - I love the the rust-based CLI tools. I would also recommend installing the GNU coreutils via homebrew (https://formulae.brew.sh/formula/coreutils). This lets you run the GNU coreutils by prefixing them with a `g`, like `gsed` rather than `sed`.

Re: Exa: An alternative to Ls

#35

Post by seanw444 »

p_j_w wrote: post #24
pimlottc wrote: post #6

This 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. 0: https://the.exa.website/

Did the link get edited or something? OP takes me to https://the.exa.website/introduction , which has a nice tutorial with all of the features and how to install.

Same here. I thought it was an alright little manifesto.

Re: Exa: An alternative to Ls

#36

Post by kbd »

The main thing I use Exa for is as a better "tree":

    et() { exa -alT --git -I'.git|node_modules|.mypy_cache|.pytest_cache|.venv' --color=always "$@" | less -R; }
    alias et1='et -L1'
    alias et2='et -L2'
    alias et3='et -L3'
Exa is great for this because it shows file details along with the tree hierarchy.

(I have to manually specify a bunch of git-ignores because Exa's git ignore support doesn't work properly.)

Re: Exa: An alternative to Ls

#39

Post by anyfoo »

earthboundkid wrote: post #37

Still defaults to the unreadable multicolumn view. Yuck! Why is this the default in ls? Why would anyone keep this awful default in another tool? It's so heinous.

I don't get why that's a problem, it allows you to see many many more files at first glance. Back when I switched from DOS (which does have the single column view as default for the "dir" command) to Linux, it was quite a revelation.

The overwhelming amount of time I don't need to see ownership/permission and modification time?

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