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Exa, a modern replacement for ls
191–200 of 420 posts
Re: Exa, a modern replacement for ls
#192The feature I'd be most interested in here is the integration with git, but I don't see an example on the site that demonstrates that. If the author is reading this, could you please add one? (Or maybe point it out, if I'm just missing it?)
if you pass --long --git you'll have a column that shows git status.
using color to show git status in normal view would be much more interesting to me.
Re: Exa, a modern replacement for ls
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think what's really in discussion here is what the default should be. ls was originally conceived and implemented in a period when all the files you would be dealing with could be measured in bytes easily, and would almost never be over four digits. Many common files today (any MP3, most word processing documents, almost every image except for thumbnails, etc) are nine or more digits, and at that level it's very ea…
You hit the nail on the head! Like I've said in these comments, I'm constantly surprised by which settings people change and which ones they don't, so differing opinions on exa's defaults is nothing new. exa shares my opinion of wanting to see thousand separators and byte suffixes by default; ls, on the other hand, has no opinion because with file sizes that small, it didn't really have to choose what the output shou…
> People have said that in scripts you'd want to just output the file size in bytes, and they're right, otherwise the numbers won't sort correctly.
Actually, many of the utilities that output in human readable format do so in a way that's also sortable through sort's -h option. It might be worth making sure you have a mode that outputs the same way so people can easily utilize sort. That is, K/M/G instead of Ki,Mi, Gi. Unless sort ignores the second alpha character when using -h and it still works, then no problem. :)
Edit: Actually, I just tested, and at least as of the sort in coreutils 8.4, it recognizes both forms, and actually dies with a warning if you mix them, so you're all good!
# echo -e "100Mi\n100Ki\n10Mi\n10Ki" | sort -h
10Ki
100Ki
10Mi
100Mi
# echo -e "100Mi\n100Ki\n10Mi\n10K" | sort -h
sort: both SI and IEC prefixes present on unitsRe: Exa, a modern replacement for ls
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
The more design elements you add - colors, type, graphics etc - the more distracting the design get and the more conflict there is between the design elements. By colorizing everything here, nothing is important anymore. It's just poor usability and design.
(author here) You know what's funny? Every time I have to use ls, I'm so used to seeing the colours that I have so much trouble finding anything. Which column in the permissions is group-read? I can just scan for the green one. Which file in the listing am I supposed to be looking at? I just look for the one with the yellow underline. Colours have familiarity to me in a way that letters and words do not -- if I expec…
For me it is always difficult to see the groups in the permission groups, I would prefer the user part would have one color, the group part another... identifying if there is a r or w is not the problem. There should maybe be also between the groups a space, just to make the output more readable. Otherwise I would like to not see the file creation/change date at all, since most times it adds no valuable information. To get more verbose output - with date info, there could be something like exa -ll (make the output more verbose if there are more -l args present).
Just some ideas, maybe you like some of them :)
Re: Exa, a modern replacement for ls
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
Writing `ls` is the first thing I do when learning a new language.
Hah, interesting! Mine is writing a simple web server (sockets, IO, string handling) and an ultra-simple command line browser (args handling, 3rd party libs for URLs, HTML parsing, etc.)
And all along I thought I was creative for skipping "Hello, World" and going straight to "Hello, World" 10 times
Re: Exa, a modern replacement for ls
#196The feature I'd be most interested in here is the integration with git, but I don't see an example on the site that demonstrates that. If the author is reading this, could you please add one? (Or maybe point it out, if I'm just missing it?)
You're right -- I missed it out! Could have sworn I put one in one of the screenshots, too...
In any case, I've been working on a new site for exa, with much better documentation and actual explanations for what the features are, and that has one in it. So you'll have to wait a bit longer I'm afraid. (I could link a screenshot here if you'd like one)
Re: Exa, a modern replacement for ls
#197> For example, exa prints human-readable file sizes by default (when would you not want that?) When I've got two similar but non-identical files, and I think that the difference between their sizes might be important. That's a silly nitpick, though. It's not like I lose ls by installing exa. Plus, it's a nice excuse to see if I can get cargo working around the corporate firewall.
To be fair, you're ignoring the "by default" part. Yes, when you want to see uniform units, you can add a command line argument. HN is so predictable that I knew someone would complain about this the second I read it, including ignoring the "by default" part so that they can by contrary.
I'm not ignoring the "by default" part; it's the crux of my complaint. There's a reason that I included that part of the text when I quoted it, after all. I perfectly understand that exa has a "-B" option.
> HN is so predictable that I knew someone would complain about this the second I read it
And I considered there'd be a pretty good chance that I'd get a reply like this.
Re: Exa, a modern replacement for ls
#198Earlier quoted context omitted.
Furthermore, l and s are typed with different hands, which makes it quite fast to type. Exa is all left-handed, so it takes even longer.
exa can be typed by using three different fingers. Its not any significantly longer then ls which use two finger movement. Maybe even faster: I dont know what science tells us about such motions, but at my opinion fingers of one hand can be more precisely synchronized, so you really can do faster movements and lower delays between keypresses. Just try to use fingers 2-1-4 (index finger, than thumb, than ring finger)…
Is that how you actually type, or are you speculating? With regular home row typing, e-x-a is 3-4-5, which are the hardest fingers to "drum", and even harder on three different rows. I've tried micro-optimizing special cases like this before, but then I have to think as much about typing as what I'm typing. On the other hand, I know I've hit "sl" by mistake more than a few times.
Re: Exa, a modern replacement for ls
#199Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks for the kudos! It's absolutely mindboggling how many times I've decided to deviate from one of ls's default settings -- certain that the old way was inferior and outdated, and that the new way will be obvious and immensely popular -- only to find people have no idea why I'm doing things this way! I need the colours to help me scan the output; if I don't see human-readable units, I curse myself for forgetting t…
I use colorized ls by default and get a bit peeved by how I have to jump through hoops to get that on OSX by default. If it works out. i'll probably alias "ls" to "exa" in the future. That said, the binary isn't self-contained (I know, I know) so I was in the middle of compiling it from source before being pulled away for work. Looking forward to trying it.
> That said, the binary isn't self-contained (I know, I know)
It wouldn't be right if something didn't go badly wrong at the worst possible moment!
Re: Exa, a modern replacement for ls
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are correct. exa uses libgit2 for its Git column, and the library's networking parts must still be included when they aren't even being used anyway. I can see how it looks VERY SUSPICIOUS for a file lister to be parsing HTTP headers! I'm not going to sell your directory entries to advertisers, I promise.
For more paranoid folks, it would be nice to have a configuration option to forego the git features and thereby remove the need for linking in any networking code. :)
There is one already; it's a cargo feature.