Exa, a modern replacement for ls • Hacker News Board

Re: Exa, a modern replacement for ls

#31

Post by icebraining » Thu, Aug 03, 2017, 9:11 PM UTC

mbrumlow wrote: post #11

djm_ wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the FAQ: >Is this a drop-in replacement for ls? No — exa has, in my opinion, much saner defaults than ls, so while the available command-line options are similar, they are not exactly the same. Most of the common options will work consistently, though. For example, exa prints human-readable file sizes by default (when would you not want that?) so ls -h no longer applies.

I almost never use the human-readable file sizes. For this to get any traction it is going to need to accept every argument ls does and play nicely. Most people who work with nix systems work on many systems and some of them don't control the software loaded on them. If I have to remember that on this* system I have to use these arguments because I have exa, vs this system I have normal ls that is going to be a deal…

> Most people who work with nix systems work on many systems

[citation needed] Lots of people using macOS and even Linux without being server administrators.

Re: Exa, a modern replacement for ls

#32

Post by otterpro » Thu, Aug 03, 2017, 9:11 PM UTC

It feels like swiss army knife of 'ls' that tries to do everything in one, and I hope more features are added, such as showing directory size, which would be a killer feature. I hate using 'du' or 'ncdu'.

I installed in Ubuntu (and WSL) by downloading the zip file and also 1 dependency by `sudo apt-get install libgit2-24'

Edit: It's also fast, and I'm beginning to think Rust is really good for making speedy commandline tool, as I'm a big fan of 'ripgrep', another popular tool written in Rust.

Re: Exa, a modern replacement for ls

#33

Post by antoinealb » Thu, Aug 03, 2017, 9:13 PM UTC

icebraining wrote: post #23

pmoriarty wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"exa prints human-readable file sizes by default (when would you not want that?)" When doing automated text-processing and wanting to easily do precise calculations, without having to deal with different units.

How does the number of bytes help with text processing? Are all your files in fixed-length encodings?

Probably means "when processing ls output", in which case not having to do prefix conversion is easier.

Re: Exa, a modern replacement for ls

#34

Post by PascLeRasc » Thu, Aug 03, 2017, 9:13 PM UTC

assafmo wrote: post #22

The main problem I can think of is that I'm so used to type cd and then ls... But OTOH it's as simple to fix as alias ls=exa EDIT: "exa prints human-readable file sizes by default (when would you not want that?)" I actually use bytes a lot for certain progress calculations. Also I get an error "exa: error while loading shared libraries: libhttp_parser.so.2.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory"…

Yeah, the 'cd' and 'ls' combo is so easy to type too. 'exa' feels more difficult since my left middle finger has to contort a little going from e to x.

Re: Exa, a modern replacement for ls

#35

Post by zokier » Thu, Aug 03, 2017, 9:13 PM UTC

pbiggar wrote: post #14

This is really cool - bringing the great treatment of `ack` to ls. And can confirm how fast it is! The unix philosophy is a great idea, but it doesn't really lead to a good experience. Glad people are making more integrated tools! Oh, and It's in homebrew already: `brew install exa`

> The unix philosophy is a great idea, but it doesn't really lead to a good experience. Glad people are making more integrated tools!

Bit ironical, as ls already is pretty "non-unixy" and has way too many features tacked into it.

From purism point of view it would make more sense that ls would be just a list of files and let other utilities (stat, sort, etc) handle the rest.

Re: Exa, a modern replacement for ls

#36

Post by arkitaip » Thu, Aug 03, 2017, 9:14 PM UTC

general_pizza wrote: post #17

This is heavily influenced by personal taste, but I don't understand the value of having so many elements of the output colorized. File type seems a useful case, everything else in the output of `exa -l` just looks distracting to me. Just my 2 cents.

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.

Re: Exa, a modern replacement for ls

#37

Post by twic » Thu, Aug 03, 2017, 9:14 PM UTC

mbrumlow wrote: post #11

djm_ wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the FAQ: >Is this a drop-in replacement for ls? No — exa has, in my opinion, much saner defaults than ls, so while the available command-line options are similar, they are not exactly the same. Most of the common options will work consistently, though. For example, exa prints human-readable file sizes by default (when would you not want that?) so ls -h no longer applies.

I almost never use the human-readable file sizes. For this to get any traction it is going to need to accept every argument ls does and play nicely. Most people who work with nix systems work on many systems and some of them don't control the software loaded on them. If I have to remember that on this* system I have to use these arguments because I have exa, vs this system I have normal ls that is going to be a deal…

> I almost never use the human-readable file sizes.

Same here. I love the idea, and i keep trying to use human-readable sizes in every command which supports them. But it turns out they're much less scannable than numbers in a common unit. How long does it take you to see which of these files is biggest:

  13k  potatoes.txt
   7M  tomatoes.txt
  128  recipe_ideas.txt
   1G  hot_sauce_formula.txt

How about now:

       13093  potatoes.txt
     7182642  tomatoes.txt
         128  recipe_ideas.txt
  1023984672  hot_sauce_formula.txt

Human-readable numbers also break all sorts of useful things like sorting (unless you have some fancypants sort which understands them), calculating totals with awk, sedding them into an expression to evaluate with $(()), etc.

Re: Exa, a modern replacement for ls

#38

Post by erichurkman » Thu, Aug 03, 2017, 9:14 PM UTC

assafmo wrote: post #22

The main problem I can think of is that I'm so used to type cd and then ls... But OTOH it's as simple to fix as alias ls=exa EDIT: "exa prints human-readable file sizes by default (when would you not want that?)" I actually use bytes a lot for certain progress calculations. Also I get an error "exa: error while loading shared libraries: libhttp_parser.so.2.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory"…

Why does a directory lister need an HTTP parser?

Re: Exa, a modern replacement for ls

#39

Post by donatj » Thu, Aug 03, 2017, 9:15 PM UTC

I set up $LS_COLORS like 15 years sgo in my .zshrc… and haven't had to touch it since. Doesn't seem like a huge deal worth replacing it over.

Re: Exa, a modern replacement for ls

#40

Post by twic » Thu, Aug 03, 2017, 9:15 PM UTC

amelius wrote: post #8

Does it take into account the background color of my xterm so things do not become unreadable?

I have an unreasonable and unquenchable hatred for developers who assume that their users have dark-background terminals. Honestly, the most insanely passionate contempt.