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Exa, a modern replacement for ls

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Re: Exa, a modern replacement for ls

#391

Post by twic »

fnj wrote: post #370
twic wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Sounds a bit extreme, but I am always puzzled by people who think dark backgrounds are just fine. Light all the way for me! What would people think if all web pages on the internet had ugly black backgrounds?

Oh, it's definitely extreme! It feels weird to feel so strongly about it. I should probably talk to a therapist about it.

Re: Exa, a modern replacement for ls

#393

Post by mmirate »

Karunamon wrote: post #29
JustSomeNobody wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But this is "Modern". The problem I see with these "modern" command replacements is 1) muscle memory and 2) I have to log into some old systems that simply will not have anything this "modern".

An alias in your favorite shell's .rc file solves the first problem. Better yet, you can throw it behind a test block to ensure you never get a command not found error: test -f /usr/bin/exa && alias ls='/usr/bin/exa' The second problem is solved by configuration management tools pushing out your desired tools to your entire environment.

> configuration management tools

Which work well until your "entire environment" is some new-fangled ARM/SuperH/(etc.) board, and your configuration management tool is x86_64-only and/or not-in-the-repo of the only distro specialized enough to support that new-fangled board.

Re: Exa, a modern replacement for ls

#394

Post by solomatov »

Touche wrote: post #255
solomatov wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely agree. If the author wants it to be a better alternative to ls, it should have better default. I.e. -bghHliS should be the default options.

I guess everyone has their preferences. exa -bghHliS is too much info for me. I agree there should be a shorthand for "give me everything" though.

Yes, it's probably too much. But what's shown by default is too little for me.

Re: Exa, a modern replacement for ls

#395

Post by dilap »

Symbiote wrote: post #333
dilap wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

maybe i'm typing wrong, but i want to hit "e" and "x" with the same finger, which makes it way slower to type than ls. things that can't be typed w/o moving your fingers from the home row are really easy to type.

> things that can't be typed w/o moving your fingers from the home row are really easy to type. That's why some people (like me) switched to Dvorak. Your sentence on Qwerty was 43 top, 21 middle and 12 bottom row keypresses. On Dvorak, it's 24 top, 45 middle and just 7 bottom row characters, twice as good! "ithout" is also entirely home-row, so you wouldn't need to bother with "w/o". The word demonstrates Dvorak's ot…

I tried colemack for a little while, and was able get to up to a slowish but bearable speed (I think around 65wpm iirc) for English sentences. And it definitely felt better and was tempting to keep going.

But I ran into a few things thay ultimately made me give it up.

Oke was emacs shortcuts — it turns out I mostly don’thave these memorized as letters, but just locations. So then trying to translate from location to querty to colemack was pretty brutal.

The other big problem is you’re instantly less efficient using anyone elses computer.

And a final one was programs that chose shortcuts thoughtfully for qwerty suddenly had really randomly chosen shortcuts.

I do kind of want to give it another shot though....

Re: Exa, a modern replacement for ls

#396

Post by fastball »

cytzol wrote: post #377
fastball wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Congratulations! You are part of the roughly 4.5% of the global population with colorblindness. Applying your physical shortcomings to a project when you are by and large the minority makes very little sense. If `ls` is better for you, use `ls`.

I do not like this attitude one bit. exa isn't here to make money, it's here to list files; if somebody can't use the software, then that's one less member of the community and one less person who can offer suggestions, rather than a resource who wouldn't give me a return on my investment. If you're colourblind and two different parts of the interface look too similar to you, then please, raise a bug.

I see where you are coming from (you want your software to be used by as many people as possible), but this really isn't the pragmatic approach to this type of software.

For certain products, this approach makes sense. Generally, this approach works for "any software where more adoption means a better experience for an individual user". Examples: a messaging app, anything with its own format (like a word processor), because it makes sharing easier, or anything which I need to work with as part of a team (version control).

This is not that. File listing programs are local and isolated. My experience using some file listing program does not improve if more people use the one that I am using. In this case, it makes more sense to have exa or ls or whatever be the software that addresses 99% of use cases for the average user. Then, for the portions of the population with particular needs, you make software that is particularly tooled towards them.I am not colorblind, so having support for colorblindness just makes software more bloated.

tl;dr - I agree with your sentiment when it comes to programs that need/want "universality". This is not one of those programs and doesn't need to be.

Re: Exa, a modern replacement for ls

#397

Post by git-pull »

lobster_johnson wrote: post #387
git-pull wrote: post #238

Earlier 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? Nobody is going to use this to replace "ls" in scripts. Are you really arguing against the creation of competing tools? "ack" shouldn't exist because "grep" already exists? "htop" shouldn't exist because there's "top"?

Correct, you don't need this tool.

Put it this way: Think of it like a Socratic dialog. Just because a replacement for ls(1) may not be beneficial due to configuration and customization already being commonplace, isn't the same as saying the mere notion of a competing unix CLI tool is bad.

top(1) doesn't allow color configuration. I use htop(1), and like it.

ls(1) already has color customization via LS_COLORS and long-list format via -l in ls. And about 10+ other output options. It's quite flexible.

git status can be shown via `git status`, and via the PS1 in oh-my-zsh/pure.

> Nobody is going to use this to replace "ls" in scripts.

I'm concerned they will, and not recognize it. To beginner and novice shell users, it's easier to cargo cult stuff in and not know what's happening. And things will break in ways that's a nightmare for them to troubleshoot.

My gut instinct is being verified by comments in this thread mentioning alias'ing in exa as ls.

Re: Exa, a modern replacement for ls

#398

Post by xyproto »

bipson wrote: post #327
unkown-unknowns wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because no-one will be removing /bin/ls with exa installed. Why not? I would.

Yeah, that's the thing: built in gnu tools might be used by other tools/scripts/etc. - if you're ls isn't there or delivers unexpected output, they will fail miserably or cause havoc

No script should parse ls output, though. There are always better ways than parsing ls output.

Re: Exa, a modern replacement for ls

#399

Post by chris_wot »

git-pull wrote: post #397
lobster_johnson wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So? Nobody is going to use this to replace "ls" in scripts. Are you really arguing against the creation of competing tools? "ack" shouldn't exist because "grep" already exists? "htop" shouldn't exist because there's "top"?

Correct, you don't need this tool. Put it this way: Think of it like a Socratic dialog. Just because a replacement for ls(1) may not be beneficial due to configuration and customization already being commonplace, isn't the same as saying the mere notion of a competing unix CLI tool is bad. top(1) doesn't allow color configuration. I use htop(1), and like it. ls(1) already has color customization via LS_COLORS and lon…

If anyone is silly enough to alias to exa, then their scripts will fail. A replacement doesn't have to be a drop in. Server admins who alias it will pay the price, so they won't do it.
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