exa
exa
exa is a new iteration on ls. It faithfully implements common display flags to ls while removing some infrequently-used features and adding support for version control status & semantic terminal highlighting.
| Quick Facts | |
|---|---|
| Version Control | git on github |
| Author | Benjamin Sago (ogham) |
| Language | Rust |
| Binary Size | 1.4M |
In this post, I’m using exa version 0.8.0 and comparing with stock OSX ls (likely ancient) and GNU ls version 8.3.0.
Installation
exa is distributed as a statically compiled binary for x86_64. You can find downloads for Linux & Mac OSX on the github release page. Other target architectures may compile using the rust toolchain.
You can also install exa through a few package managers. Using homebrew on OSX, brew install exa. If you’re a rust developer, cargo install exa. If you’re using the Nix package manager, nix-env -i exa.
Usage
These examples are going to be performed on the checked-out source code repo for this blog.
For basic usage, exa is almost identical to ls. Running without arguments results in a listing of all visible files in the current directory, adding -l switches to long output.
$ exa
archetypes
config.toml
content
data
layouts
resources
Session.vim
static
themes
TODO.md
$ exa -l
drwxr-xr-x - jamie 6 Feb 11:14 archetypes
.rw-r--r-- 665 jamie 6 Feb 10:47 config.toml
drwxr-xr-x - jamie 5 Feb 18:58 content
drwxr-xr-x - jamie 5 Feb 18:56 data
drwxr-xr-x - jamie 5 Feb 18:56 layouts
drwxr-xr-x - jamie 5 Feb 18:58 resources
.rw-r--r-- 69 jamie 6 Feb 11:14 Session.vim
drwxr-xr-x - jamie 5 Feb 18:56 static
drwxr-xr-x - jamie 5 Feb 18:58 themes
.rw-r--r-- 60 jamie 5 Feb 19:40 TODO.md
exa also supports the same -F flag that ls does, to give an indicator of the filetype on each file. You can see the addition of slashes after each directory in the following example:
$ exa
Session.vim archetypes config.toml content resources themes
$ exa -F
Session.vim archetypes/ config.toml content/ resources/ themes/
exa implements many of ls’s most common flags:
| Flag | Meaning |
|---|---|
-a | Show dotfiles (hidden files and directories) |
-l | Long output with extended information about each file |
-1 | Show each item on its own line |
-r | Reverse sort order |
-x | Sort columns rather than rows in grid format |
-R | Recurse into subdirectories |
BSD -g | Show group name in long output (-l) |
-i | Show inode in long output (-l) |
-u | Use last access time for sorting & printing |
BSD -U | Use creation time for sorting & printing |
BSD -@ | Display extended attributes in long output (-l) |
However, some common ls flags have different meanings, which is confusing for newcomers. -t turns on sorting by time in ls, but in exa it’s a selector for which timestamp field you want to show in long output. -h turns on human-readable sizes in ls, but exa does this by default so they repurpose the flag to add a header.
Here’s some translations to make that transition easier:
ls flag | exa equivalent |
|---|---|
-t (sort by time) | -s modified |
-h (human-readable sizes) | On by default |
-G (terminal color) | On by default |
-S (sort by size) | -s size |
New Features
Unlike ls, exa has a number of other display modes. It supports tree-style recursive listing, like the tree utility:
$ exa -T content/
content
└── posts
├── exa.md
└── introduction.md
The default display mode is called “grid” and can be explicitly turned on with the -G, --grid flag.
$ exa -G themes/terminal/
LICENSE.md exampleSite layouts package.json source theme.toml yarn.lock
README.md images package-lock.json postcss.config.js static webpack.config.js
The long display format also has a number of feature flags. exa supports printing a header, an enhancement I always wanted out of ls:
$ exa -lh
Permissions Size User Date Modified Name
.rw-r--r-- 69 jamie 1 Mar 9:28 Session.vim
drwxr-xr-x - jamie 6 Mar 6:58 archetypes
.rw-r--r-- 779 jamie 1 Mar 10:10 config.toml
drwxr-xr-x - jamie 1 Mar 9:28 content
drwxr-xr-x - jamie 1 Mar 9:29 resources
drwxr-xr-x - jamie 1 Mar 9:28 themes
exa also understands git version control status, which can be turned on with the --git flag:
$ exa --git -l
.rw-r--r-- 69 jamie 1 Mar 9:28 -- Session.vim
drwxr-xr-x - jamie 6 Mar 6:58 -- archetypes
.rw-r--r-- 779 jamie 1 Mar 10:10 -M config.toml
drwxr-xr-x - jamie 1 Mar 9:28 -M content
drwxr-xr-x - jamie 1 Mar 9:29 -- resources
drwxr-xr-x - jamie 1 Mar 9:28 -- themes
In the above output, config.toml & content are modified files in this git repository. There’s also support for ignoring files in .gitignore, with --git-ignore:
$ exa -l --git
drwxr-xr-x - jamie 6 Feb 11:14 -- archetypes
.rw-r--r-- 779 jamie 8 Mar 0:21 -- config.toml
drwxr-xr-x - jamie 5 Feb 18:58 -M content
drwxr-xr-x - jamie 5 Feb 18:56 -- data
drwxr-xr-x - jamie 5 Feb 18:56 -- layouts
drwxr-xr-x - jamie 20 Feb 11:53 -- public
drwxr-xr-x - jamie 5 Feb 18:58 -- resources
.rw-r--r-- 69 jamie 6 Feb 11:14 -- Session.vim
drwxr-xr-x - jamie 8 Mar 0:21 -- static
drwxr-xr-x - jamie 5 Feb 18:58 -- themes
.rw-r--r-- 1.7k jamie 25 Feb 23:20 -- TODO.md
$ cat .gitignore
TODO.md
public/
*.swp
*.swo
$ exa -l --git --git-ignore
drwxr-xr-x - jamie 6 Feb 11:14 -- archetypes
.rw-r--r-- 779 jamie 8 Mar 0:21 -- config.toml
drwxr-xr-x - jamie 5 Feb 18:58 -M content
drwxr-xr-x - jamie 5 Feb 18:56 -- data
drwxr-xr-x - jamie 5 Feb 18:56 -- layouts
drwxr-xr-x - jamie 20 Feb 11:53 -- public
drwxr-xr-x - jamie 5 Feb 18:58 -- resources
.rw-r--r-- 69 jamie 6 Feb 11:14 -- Session.vim
drwxr-xr-x - jamie 8 Mar 0:21 -- static
drwxr-xr-x - jamie 5 Feb 18:58 -- themes
To supplement the shell’s wildcard support, exa supports globbing ignore with the -I flag:
$ exa -I '*o*'
archetypes static themes
Another cool exa feature is support for displaying timestamps in a number of different formats. The above examples show the default, but iso, long-iso, and full-iso are all supported as well.
$ exa --time-style full-iso -l
.rw-r--r-- 69 jamie 2019-03-01 09:28:30.488772561 -0800 Session.vim
drwxr-xr-x - jamie 2019-03-06 06:58:02.198227736 -0800 archetypes
.rw-r--r-- 779 jamie 2019-03-01 10:10:40.691602867 -0800 config.toml
drwxr-xr-x - jamie 2019-03-01 09:28:30.490107441 -0800 content
drwxr-xr-x - jamie 2019-03-01 09:29:26.427271484 -0800 resources
drwxr-xr-x - jamie 2019-03-01 09:28:30.490768092 -0800 themes
The terminal color support can also be used for weighting filesizes. I created a large file (called “bigfile” because I’m creative) and several other smaller files in the current directory to show off --color-scale:
Hmm… not so distinctive. I got better results for this on OSX, for what it’s worth.
tl;dr
exa provides a fresh take on ls, stacking on features useful to the average developer while retaining most options from the original. If you have a l alias that sets many ls flags to make the output easier to read, it might be time to try a new tool.