The sys admin's daily grind: exa
Charly's Column – exa
There is nothing that admins hate more than unnecessary typing at the console. That's why Charly's clever alternative exa replaces the classic, but ancient, ls.
There are very few commands that you type more often than ls when working in the shell. As experienced Linux users will know, the shorter a command is, the more important it is. Even the often expressed suspicion that the shortest commands have the longest man pages is something that ls cannot really refute. You would think that there is little to improve with ls, but the exa developers beg to differ.
Instead of a one-to-one replacement, exa [1] seeks to be the better ls. It gets by with far fewer parameters and is correspondingly less powerful. But if you use only the most common options – for me, that would be -l, -a, -t, -h, and --sort=size – you won't miss anything. That's because exa comes with sensible defaults that make some parameters superfluous. For example, exa always displays file sizes in a notation that is easily readable for humans, such as 2.9M instead of 2893342, which you first need to enable by adding -h in ls.
The output from exa -l, the counterpart of ls -l, looks like Figure 1. This is still very reminiscent of the original, except for the lush coloring. Using the additional -F parameter (for "file type"), I can show additional characters that indicate the file type. For example, an asterisk is appended to executable files, a slash to directories, and an at sign to symbolic links. The sort parameter, which is very important for me personally, also works as expected. The command --sort=size sorts by file size, while -r inverts the sort order.
[...]
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
US / Canada
UK / Australia
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
Fedora Continues 32-Bit Support
In a move that should come as a relief to some portions of the Linux community, Fedora will continue supporting 32-bit architecture.
-
Linux Kernel 6.17 Drops bcachefs
After a clash over some late fixes and disagreements between bcachefs's lead developer and Linus Torvalds, bachefs is out.
-
ONLYOFFICE v9 Embraces AI
Like nearly all office suites on the market (except LibreOffice), ONLYOFFICE has decided to go the AI route.
-
Two Local Privilege Escalation Flaws Discovered in Linux
Qualys researchers have discovered two local privilege escalation vulnerabilities that allow hackers to gain root privileges on major Linux distributions.
-
New TUXEDO InfinityBook Pro Powered by AMD Ryzen AI 300
The TUXEDO InfinityBook Pro 14 Gen10 offers serious power that is ready for your business, development, or entertainment needs.
-
Danish Ministry of Digital Affairs Transitions to Linux
Another major organization has decided to kick Microsoft Windows and Office to the curb in favor of Linux.
-
Linux Mint 20 Reaches EOL
With Linux Mint 20 at its end of life, the time has arrived to upgrade to Linux Mint 22.
-
TuxCare Announces Support for AlmaLinux 9.2
Thanks to TuxCare, AlmaLinux 9.2 (and soon version 9.6) now enjoys years of ongoing patching and compliance.
-
Go-Based Botnet Attacking IoT Devices
Using an SSH credential brute-force attack, the Go-based PumaBot is exploiting IoT devices everywhere.
-
Plasma 6.5 Promises Better Memory Optimization
With the stable Plasma 6.4 on the horizon, KDE has a few new tricks up its sleeve for Plasma 6.5.