A multi-threaded program to list files. The times we are living in...
I'll give it a try for a few weeks.
Exa, a modern replacement for ls
311–320 of 420 posts
Re: Exa, a modern replacement for ls
#312It is great to scratch an itch and make something behave exactly as you want it to be - kudos. That said, this is very much not for me. Default-colorized is something I emphatically do not want; defaulting to relative units, ditto. It it were me, the first thing I would do is get rid of 'grid' display entirely - reading across just doesn't work for me. Etc. More prosaically, `ls` is sort of like breathing for me - I…
> defaulting to relative units, ditto.
One thing I always wanted to remove from `ls` is the default "human-like" display of dates and times (which `exa`, unfortunately, seems to inherit). This is IMO just annoying (and replacing time with year, if it differs from current, just plain stupid; and don't get me started about the "bright" idea of using locales there!). We have ISO-8601 for a reason. It's readable and universal. 2017-06-17 is easier to parse than "cze 17" (hello, locales).
Re: Exa, a modern replacement for ls
#313Re: Exa, a modern replacement for ls
#314Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> e-x-a is 3-4-5, which are the hardest fingers to "drum", and even harder on three different rows.
Its because of the rules of blind typeing courses that says thumb should be used only for space? If you got such a courses more than a year before and already mastered blind typeing, than stop worrying. Just use thumb for `x`.
> 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.
It got better with practice. Like blind typeing. All you need is to train you fingers for they do it without conscious effort of thinking. Are you play on some musical instrument? Try it, it teaches how to train your fingers.
Re: Exa, a modern replacement for ls
#315I find quite funny that the author is so convinced that the use of colors is the "right default". 1) I'm colorblind so my view of colors is different from yours. 2) I find that any tool which use many colors suck: there will be a color combination which will be hard to read (for example git log: the sha1 keys are dark red on black, unreadable) but using just a few color is very nice (git diff: 3 colors, one for +, on…
Expecting every single command-line application to support different colour schemes for colorblind people is insane, not because the effort it worthless, but you are asking it to be spent on the wrong level of abstraction.
I know that Gnome Terminal supports[1] different colour schemes which you can customise, and I think this is the point where it should be implemented at.
Re: Exa, a modern replacement for ls
#316Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't see it that way. The focus over the qualifier of whether it's "drop-in" misses the point. How else are people going to interpret and use "a modern replacement for ls", in practice? Not to replace the file /bin/ls itself. Users will symlink/PATH/alias exa in as "ls" in front of /bin/ls in their shell for convenience.
So what if they do?
Shell scripts break. If it's not a parity with ls(1), the output and arguments won't be compatible.
I forgot to add: Having colors / fancy output when you just want to pipe information around the shell is of no value.
IMO it goes against the spirit of what commands like ls are meant to do, and the behavior exa provides is better placed, and already done well, via shell configuration (e.g. oh-my-zsh, presto, pure)
Re: Exa, a modern replacement for ls
#317Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wow, the comments in this thread are quite harsh. I wonder if a lot of that has to do with how it's being "marketed" --- it might just be me, but whenever I see "modern" being used to describe something, it evokes the negative connotations of being trendy, fashionable, boring, vapid, fleeting, style-over-substance that's all too common with software today (Windows' "modern UI/Metro" being one of the first examples to…
I'd suggest describing it as a "colourful alternative" rather than a "modern replacement", because no-one will be removing /bin/ls with exa installed. "Replacement" strongly implies removal of the thing being replaced, as with "replacement hip", "replacement CEO" etc. As for why anyone might feel aggrieved about replacement of core Unix services, my mind immediately drew a (possibly unfair, but emotionally comparable…
> because no-one will be removing /bin/ls with exa installed.
Why not? I would.
Re: Exa, a modern replacement for ls
#318It is great to scratch an itch and make something behave exactly as you want it to be - kudos. That said, this is very much not for me. Default-colorized is something I emphatically do not want; defaulting to relative units, ditto. It it were me, the first thing I would do is get rid of 'grid' display entirely - reading across just doesn't work for me. Etc. More prosaically, `ls` is sort of like breathing for me - I…
> defaulting to relative units, ditto. One thing I always wanted to remove from `ls` is the default "human-like" display of dates and times (which `exa`, unfortunately, seems to inherit). This is IMO just annoying (and replacing time with year, if it differs from current, just plain stupid; and don't get me started about the "bright" idea of using locales there!). We have ISO-8601 for a reason. It's readable and univ…
export TIME_STYLE=long-iso
I also have this, for the thousands-comma display:
export BLOCK_SIZE="'1"
$ ls -on i*
-rw-rw-r-- 1 1001 1,335 2017-06-16 14:31 icon-shelters.svg
-rw-r--r-- 1 1001 1,633,946 2016-11-07 14:50 insects.png
-rw-r--r-- 1 1001 1,445,837 2016-11-18 10:32 ix
Time style: https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/html_node/Form...
Re: Exa, a modern replacement for ls
#319It is great to scratch an itch and make something behave exactly as you want it to be - kudos. That said, this is very much not for me. Default-colorized is something I emphatically do not want; defaulting to relative units, ditto. It it were me, the first thing I would do is get rid of 'grid' display entirely - reading across just doesn't work for me. Etc. More prosaically, `ls` is sort of like breathing for me - I…
> defaulting to relative units, ditto. One thing I always wanted to remove from `ls` is the default "human-like" display of dates and times (which `exa`, unfortunately, seems to inherit). This is IMO just annoying (and replacing time with year, if it differs from current, just plain stupid; and don't get me started about the "bright" idea of using locales there!). We have ISO-8601 for a reason. It's readable and univ…
Oh and file sizes should all use the same unit for easy comparing (maybe default to MB).
Re: Exa, a modern replacement for ls
#320Earlier quoted context omitted.
Tell me. I am curious to know if use a text editor without syntax highlighting. Seems to be the case that there is no modern text editor that doesn't color every single word. Must be so hard for you now that you're forced to use these tools with such "poor usability and design". How do you even manage?
That's partly the reason why I tend to avoid software with "modern" in its description... but more seriously, I don't care much for syntax highlighting --- I can put up with it (unless the colours are too distracting), but I do prefer monochrome text. Related: http://www.linusakesson.net/programming/syntaxhighlighting/
Did he seriously just throw random colors on random words and compare that to syntax highlighting?