exa describe itself as the "A modern version of ‘ls’. https://the.exa.website/".
I'm using exa instead of ls locally.
Here are my aliases making this official.
alias l='exa'
alias la='exa -a'
alias ll='exa -lah'
alias ls='exa --color=auto'
Try it out.
Top comments (5)
exa is by far the best alternative of ls.
I'm using these alias(s)
The thing that puts me off exa is the same as with things like oh-my-zsh:
ls
uses colours to distinguish file types.ls
knows about symlinks.ls
is small and fast and just one single file. On my system it's 10% the size ofexa
and over 300% faster, while using 20% as much CPU.I'm not saying it's bad, but I am saying that the reasons it might be good are not the ones people are pushing.
Personally, I prefer the way
ls
handles colours. It colourises only the file/directory name or the little symbol for "executable", etc.exa
looks like a wall of colour, with everything vying for attention.The only thing I see
exa
do overls
is thegit
integration and the highlighting of the current username.This is an anti-feature as far as I'm concerned. We already have a separate
tree
command, and it already does one thing, well.@moopet I like the default settings from exa. The colors provides more information and it I got used with its output really fast.
The
exa
output is different from thels
command but I like it better.I can always use
\ls
when I need the rawls
behaviour.Important detail: I just use exa locally. In servers I keep using the plain old
ls
and thats why the size of the command don't affect me so much.nice can't keep using
exa
because mistypesex
which enters in Ex mode. Using this insteadalias ls='exa --grid --color=auto --icons'
. I don't like long lists :)