exa is hard to type, bad choice of name for something I'd be typing many times a day
I usually alias 'ls' to 'l' anyway, so it would not be a big deal to alias 'exa' to 'l'. I agree that exa is not exactly memorable.
Exa, a modern replacement for ls
41–50 of 420 posts
Re: Exa, a modern replacement for ls
#42> exa is written in Rust, so it’s small
I suspected this would be total bullshit, and it is. Its small binary is a mere 3.4 megabytes. I wonder if I misinterpreted the "small" part.
Re: Exa, a modern replacement for ls
#43Earlier 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…
We shouldn't need complete backwards compatibility on a command that is completely new, surely? That would limit the amount of improvement that could be made dramatically.
Also, as a side note, why do you enjoy using machine readable file sizes over human readable? The latter, as chosen by their name, are meant to be easier to use for humans.
Re: Exa, a modern replacement for ls
#44exa is hard to type, bad choice of name for something I'd be typing many times a day
I thought the same at first. ls is good mnemonic for list, but what exa stands for and why three letters? "gf" for example would be better. neighbor characters on the keyboard, could stand for get files.
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.
Re: Exa, a modern replacement for ls
#45so whats the replacement for sl in that case? can't live without it
Re: Exa, a modern replacement for ls
#46The 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"…
> 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
Are you really sure you want to replace ls with exa? I can think of a dozen reasons it could cause trouble.
Re: Exa, a modern replacement for ls
#47cool. i feel like this whole thread is the epitome of hacker news comments
Re: Exa, a modern replacement for ls
#48exa is hard to type, bad choice of name for something I'd be typing many times a day
Well, it can be typed easily with one hand. At least it has that going for it
Re: Exa, a modern replacement for ls
#49> exa is written in Rust, so it’s small I suspected this would be total bullshit, and it is. Its small binary is a mere 3.4 megabytes. I wonder if I misinterpreted the "small" part.
Compared to JavaScript, one would guess. Rust is capable of generating extremely small binaries but none of the compiler's defaults are amenable to it
Re: Exa, a modern replacement for ls
#50What do all the colors mean? I wish he would make a little page explaining what I'm looking at and what each color means.