6 ms·

exa is hard to type, bad choice of name for something I'd be typing many times a day

by mavhc 9y ago

singlow 9y ago
You typically would alias replacement scripts.
balls187 9y ago
alias it.
kowdermeister 9y ago
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.
- Denvercoder9 9y ago
  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.
  - ordu 9y ago
    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) in that order, and you'll see. Or, when typing exa as part of larger text, you can use 3-1-4 sequence of fingers it allows to place palm in a way that allows fast movement into "exa" or out of it, keeping index finger free.
    - dilap 9y ago
      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.
      - Symbiote 9y ago
        > 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 other feature nicely, hand alternation and outward-to-inwards flow: without ,gkjsfk (Qwerty equivalent) RLRRLLR The letter pairs typed with the same hand go smaller-to-big finger, since "th" (Qwerty "kj") is much easier to type than "ht" ("jk") -- and "th" occurs about 7x as often in English as "ht".
        dilap 9y ago
        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....
    - mcbits 9y ago
      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.
  - zodiac 9y ago
    annoyingly, on dvorak ls is typed with the pinky of the right hand for both characters, and then I usually use the same finger to press enter again after
- eridius 9y ago
  "exa" probably stands for "examine", though I don't know for sure.
otterpro 9y ago
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.
- abritinthebay 9y ago
  Just think "examine" rather than "list" and you'll be fine. But yeah, alias ls=exa also works.
TakerofVita 9y ago
Well, it can be typed easily with one hand. At least it has that going for it
- tomsthumb 9y ago
  "easily" It's top row, bottom row, middle row, and the 'x' on a normal keyboard is half way to being directly under the 'e'. Very awkward and antithetical to the ideas of people who have designed keyboard layouts specifically for efficiency and ergonomics. The only demographic that comes to mind which would find that hand position "natural" would be guitarists and other string players.
  - executesorder66 9y ago
    I've been playing stringed instruments for more than 10 years. The 'e' 'x' combination is probably the most spastic and slowest key combination on a qwerty keyboard. I type about 100 WPM, so typing exa doesn't take _that_ long. But it feels like it's at least 5 times slower than typing ls. Which would be really annoying for a command that you'd be typing all day.
pweissbrod 9y ago
+1. ls (or ll) is a more tangible name. a frequently used command is best to reside on the middle row of the keyboard. Also I've noticed terminal emulators (like terminator) recognize output and sprinkle in formatting on the display.
- notatoad 9y ago
  >terminal emulators (like terminator) recognize output iirc, if your terminal emulator is doing something funny with the output of `ls` it's because they've re-implemented it as a function and are intercepting the call to ls and running their function instead, not because they're recognizing the output.
marssaxman 9y ago
Switch to dvorak and you'll find that 'exa' is noticeably more convenient than 'ls' :-)
cytzol 9y ago
Well it's too late to change now! It's one-handed, even on Dvorak, which is a bit annoying. I don't think it's too much of an ask for people to define their own aliases for it, though. The overlap between people who install custom command-line tools and people who know how to edit their shell config can't be small.
- h1d 9y ago
  If it was for the sake of usability, "asd" was far easier to type than "exa" where my fingers have to dance around when the name doesn't mean anything anyway.
  - Symbiote 9y ago
    alias asd=exa I already have alias h=ls alias hh='ls -l' alias lrt='ls -lrt' alias lrta='ls -lrta' (The first two because I use Dvorak, in which case I'd use 'aoe' instead of 'asd'.)
terrestrial 9y ago
'xa' is available on my system. Who is working on the PR?
sizeofchar 9y ago
The author could change the name to pls (pretty ls). Still easy, confortable and differentiates it from ls, while maintaining proximity.
- meric 9y ago
  export pls=exa
  - sizeofchar 9y ago
    But the tool is all about its sensible defaults (which I find justifiable).
esolyt 9y ago
You can just use an alias.

exa is hard to type, bad choice of name for something I'd be typing many times a day

by mavhc 9y ago

exa is hard to type, bad choice of name for something I'd be typing many times a day

singlow 9y ago

You typically would alias replacement scripts.

balls187 9y ago

alias it.

kowdermeister 9y ago

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.

Denvercoder9 9y ago
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.
- ordu 9y ago
  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) in that order, and you'll see. Or, when typing exa as part of larger text, you can use 3-1-4 sequence of fingers it allows to place palm in a way that allows fast movement into "exa" or out of it, keeping index finger free.
  - dilap 9y ago
    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.
    - Symbiote 9y ago
      > 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 other feature nicely, hand alternation and outward-to-inwards flow: without ,gkjsfk (Qwerty equivalent) RLRRLLR The letter pairs typed with the same hand go smaller-to-big finger, since "th" (Qwerty "kj") is much easier to type than "ht" ("jk") -- and "th" occurs about 7x as often in English as "ht".
      - dilap 9y ago
        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....
  - mcbits 9y ago
    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.
- zodiac 9y ago
  annoyingly, on dvorak ls is typed with the pinky of the right hand for both characters, and then I usually use the same finger to press enter again after
eridius 9y ago
"exa" probably stands for "examine", though I don't know for sure.

otterpro 9y ago

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.

abritinthebay 9y ago
Just think "examine" rather than "list" and you'll be fine. But yeah, alias ls=exa also works.

TakerofVita 9y ago

Well, it can be typed easily with one hand. At least it has that going for it

tomsthumb 9y ago
"easily" It's top row, bottom row, middle row, and the 'x' on a normal keyboard is half way to being directly under the 'e'. Very awkward and antithetical to the ideas of people who have designed keyboard layouts specifically for efficiency and ergonomics. The only demographic that comes to mind which would find that hand position "natural" would be guitarists and other string players.
- executesorder66 9y ago
  I've been playing stringed instruments for more than 10 years. The 'e' 'x' combination is probably the most spastic and slowest key combination on a qwerty keyboard. I type about 100 WPM, so typing exa doesn't take _that_ long. But it feels like it's at least 5 times slower than typing ls. Which would be really annoying for a command that you'd be typing all day.

pweissbrod 9y ago

+1. ls (or ll) is a more tangible name. a frequently used command is best to reside on the middle row of the keyboard. Also I've noticed terminal emulators (like terminator) recognize output and sprinkle in formatting on the display.

notatoad 9y ago
>terminal emulators (like terminator) recognize output iirc, if your terminal emulator is doing something funny with the output of `ls` it's because they've re-implemented it as a function and are intercepting the call to ls and running their function instead, not because they're recognizing the output.

marssaxman 9y ago

Switch to dvorak and you'll find that 'exa' is noticeably more convenient than 'ls' :-)

cytzol 9y ago

Well it's too late to change now! It's one-handed, even on Dvorak, which is a bit annoying. I don't think it's too much of an ask for people to define their own aliases for it, though. The overlap between people who install custom command-line tools and people who know how to edit their shell config can't be small.

h1d 9y ago
If it was for the sake of usability, "asd" was far easier to type than "exa" where my fingers have to dance around when the name doesn't mean anything anyway.
- Symbiote 9y ago
  alias asd=exa I already have alias h=ls alias hh='ls -l' alias lrt='ls -lrt' alias lrta='ls -lrta' (The first two because I use Dvorak, in which case I'd use 'aoe' instead of 'asd'.)

terrestrial 9y ago

'xa' is available on my system. Who is working on the PR?

sizeofchar 9y ago

The author could change the name to pls (pretty ls). Still easy, confortable and differentiates it from ls, while maintaining proximity.

meric 9y ago
export pls=exa
- sizeofchar 9y ago
  But the tool is all about its sensible defaults (which I find justifiable).

esolyt 9y ago

You can just use an alias.