>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.
When doing automated text-processing and wanting to easily do precise calculations, without having to deal with different units.
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 breaker for many.
Same here. I love the idea, and i keep trying to use human-readable sizes in every command which supports them. But it turns out they're much less scannable than numbers in a common unit. How long does it take you to see which of these files is biggest:
13k potatoes.txt
7M tomatoes.txt
128 recipe_ideas.txt
1G hot_sauce_formula.txt
13093 potatoes.txt
7182642 tomatoes.txt
128 recipe_ideas.txt
1023984672 hot_sauce_formula.txt
.. 13k potatoes.txt
.... 7M tomatoes.txt
128 recipe_ideas.txt
........ 1G hot_sauce_formula.txtFWIW GNU sort can sort by human readable units using the -h option.
alias bff='ls -S | head -1' # biggest fscking file[citation needed] Lots of people using macOS and even Linux without being server administrators.
Also just because you have access to many systems it does not make you a server administrator. I have access to tens of thousands and I am not a system administrator.
Over the years of working with Linux the one thing I have learned that saved me many times and made me productive was to learn the defaults and use the tools that you will most likely find on all systems. If you don't you will find your self bumbling around and feeling lost if you ever log into a system that is missing your favorite modification / customization.
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.
I would also like to add to the case twic showed that often I am using ls to see if a file is growing. In human-readable format hides the actual size and rounds -- it could move 200 megs or more before the human-readable output is updated from 1G to 1.2G.
To address why backwards comparability is needed is because of muscle memory. Its not likely that this tool will be on every system I use. I don't want to have to think about what system I am on and what command I need to run. It would be nice to also be able to alias it to 'ls' as ls is way faster to type than eax -- all on the left hand makes it MUCH slower -- although I am sure there will be those who say different -- but they are wrong.
When its being used as part of a script.
Of course alternatively exa could aim for that lovely ls-style experience and vary its output depending on isatty(), switching between human-readable and absolute numbers.