You list files hundreds of times a day. Why spend your time squinting at black and white text? exa is an improved file lister with more features and better defaults. It uses colours to distinguish file types and metadata. It knows about symlinks, extended attributes, and Git. And it’s small, fast, and just one single binary. Different types of file and data will be coloured differently, and the user and group columns will be highlighted for the current user. exa can display a file’s extended attributes, as well as standard filesystem information such as the inode, the number of blocks, and a file’s various dates and times. exa queries files in parallel, giving you performance on par with ls. Not only is the standard tree tool built-in, but it’ll show you your files’ information alongside the hierarchy. View the staged and unstaged status of every file, right there in the standard view. Also works in tree view for a high-level overview of your repository.
Features
- exa’s most prominent feature is its colour scheme. It’s designed for modern, 256-colour terminals, and it’s not shy about it!
- exa will examine the current user and look up the list of groups that they are a member of, so it can highlight that user’s own files
- exa is able to list a file’s extended attributes, also known as xattrs
- exa’s long view displays not only the names of the files you list, but also their metadata, including permission bits, file sizes, timestamps, and more
- exa’s tree view provides an analogue to the Unix tree command
- When you're listing files inside a Git repository, exa can query it and display the Git status for each file