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I have nothing against exa, but the two examples in this post are are not correct for any sort of recent system. > Here’s an example. exa, by default, runs the

by theamk 5y ago

I have nothing against exa, but the two examples in this post are are not correct for any sort of recent system. > Here’s an example. exa, by default, runs the stat system call on every file it encounters. So does "ls" ... for at least last 20 years. Just checked on random Ubuntu system I had -- executables and dirs are highlighted with different colors. > exa makes heavy use of colours, treating them as opt-out rather than opt-in: it will highlight files and data differently based on their type or meaning. So does ls -- I see colors in default install. Yes, you need an environment variable to enable this, but all the modern distros set this anyway. So based on that page, it seems that the only thing that EXA does differently is that it upgrades ls's 16 color palette to 256 colors. I think they need stronger motivation.

Liru 5y ago
ls doesn't do colours by default, but a lot of distros alias `ls` to `ls --color=auto` so it seems that way.
jeroenhd 5y ago
There's a features page on their website that shows some more tricks it can do, like smarter file type colouring, generating a tree view and showing the git status of files. I'm still not entirely convinced that it's a must-have, but it's more than just ls with fancy colours. Personally, I'd much rather have seen an output format like JSON as a feature instead, so you can do some easier scripting through exa and jq. I'm sure there are other tools out there to serve thst purpose, though.
- setpatchaddress 5y ago
  Yes, they really need to call out what makes it different. The front page makes it sound mostly like an alias to ls with specific options + an additional call to `git status`.
throwaway8582 5y ago
> I think they need stronger motivation. I've been using `exa` for over a year now, and I use it as an alias for both `ls` and `tree`. I don't really notice any benefit compared to using `ls`, but I really prefer its tree mode over the default `tree` command. It's nice being able to use the same CLI args and have a similar output format for both `tree` and `ls`.
gizdan 5y ago
It does a little more than that. See my other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29015973 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29015973

by theamk 5y ago

Liru 5y ago

ls doesn't do colours by default, but a lot of distros alias `ls` to `ls --color=auto` so it seems that way.

jeroenhd 5y ago

There's a features page on their website that shows some more tricks it can do, like smarter file type colouring, generating a tree view and showing the git status of files. I'm still not entirely convinced that it's a must-have, but it's more than just ls with fancy colours. Personally, I'd much rather have seen an output format like JSON as a feature instead, so you can do some easier scripting through exa and jq. I'm sure there are other tools out there to serve thst purpose, though.

setpatchaddress 5y ago
Yes, they really need to call out what makes it different. The front page makes it sound mostly like an alias to ls with specific options + an additional call to `git status`.

throwaway8582 5y ago

> I think they need stronger motivation. I've been using `exa` for over a year now, and I use it as an alias for both `ls` and `tree`. I don't really notice any benefit compared to using `ls`, but I really prefer its tree mode over the default `tree` command. It's nice being able to use the same CLI args and have a similar output format for both `tree` and `ls`.

gizdan 5y ago

It does a little more than that. See my other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29015973 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29015973