exa

exa is a replacement for ls written in Rust.

Works on all recent Rust versions >= 1.4.0.

Screenshots

Options

exa’s options are similar, but not exactly the same, as ls.

Display Options

• -1, --oneline: display one entry per line
• -G, --grid: display entries in a grid view (default)
• -l, --long: display extended details and attributes
• -R, --recurse: recurse into directories
• -T, --tree: recurse into subdirectories in a tree view
• -x, --across: sort multi-column view entries across
• --color, --colour: when to colourise the output

Filtering Options

• -a, --all: show dot files
• -d, --list-dirs: list directories as regular files
• -L, --level=(depth): maximum depth of recursion
• -r, --reverse: reverse sort order
• -s, --sort=(field): field to sort by
• --group-directories-first: list directories before other files

Long View Options

These options are available when running with --long (-l):

• -b, --binary: use binary (power of two) file sizes
• -B, --bytes: list file sizes in bytes, without prefixes
• -g, --group: show group as well as user
• -h, --header: show a header row
• -H, --links: show number of hard links column
• -i, --inode: show inode number column
• -m, --modified: display timestamp of most recent modification
• -S, --blocks: show number of file system blocks
• -t, --time=(field): which timestamp to show for a file
• -u, --accessed: display timestamp of last access for a file
• -U, --created: display timestamp of creation of a file
• -@, --extended: display extended attribute keys and sizes
• --git: show Git status for a file

Accepted --color options are always, automatic, and never. Valid sort fields are name, size, extension, modified, accessed, created, inode, and none. Valid time fields are modified, accessed, and created.

Installation

exa is written in Rust. Once you have it set up, a simple make install will compile exa and install it into /usr/local/bin.

exa depends on libgit2 for certain features. If you’re unable to compile libgit2, you can opt out of Git support by running cargo build --release --no-default-features.

Cargo Install

If you're using a recent version of Cargo (0.5.0 or higher), you can use the cargo install command:

cargo install --git https://github.com/ogham/exa

or:

cargo install --no-default-features --git https://github.com/ogham/exa

Cargo will clone the repository to a temporary directory, build it there and place the exa binary to: $HOME/.cargo (and can be overridden by setting the --root option).