Show HN: I made an ls alternative for my personal use

Categorization and hashes seem to be good ideas, yet you could do all of these with other tools already. You could be knowing the tool 'exa', a similar ls alternative. Just wanted to mention.

elashri• 2 years ago

There seems to be a lot of projects that is now competing to replace ls (for people preferences)

For reference, those are the ones I am familiar with. They are somehow active in contrast to things like exa which is not maintained anymore.

eza: (https://github.com/eza-community/eza)

lsd: (https://github.com/Peltoche/lsd)

colorls: (https://github.com/athityakumar/colorls)

g: (https://github.com/Equationzhao/g)

ls++: (https://github.com/trapd00r/LS_COLORS)

logo-ls: (https://github.com/canta2899/logo-ls) - this is forked because main development stopped 4 years ago.

Any more?

Personally I prefer eza and wrote a zsh plugin that is basically aliases that matches what I have from my muscle memory.

iroddis• 2 years ago

I’ve tried a few of these, but most of them seem to be following the trend of folding other shell functionality into one tool. Searching for contents (find + grep -H, or ripgrep), filtering (grep), sorting (ls does it natively, or you can use sort, sort -h for sorting human readable sizes), the list goes on and on.

I guess this is a mini lament that many of these tools are moving away from the Unix philosophy of do one thing well, and make it easy to chain.

And a last very small lament that BeOS didn’t succeed, and their filesystem-as-a-database approach didn’t become more standard.

burntsushi7• 2 years ago

You can still chain ripgrep. I specifically designed it so that you can chain it just like you would a normal grep.

It does indeed also include other functionality that might traditionally be left to other tools (like filtering files). But this is nothing that GNU grep wasn't already doing itself anyway.

IMO, it's better to view the Unix philosophy as a means to an end and not an end to itself. And IMO, it's important to weigh the benefits of coupling to the user experience.

Retr0id• 2 years ago

vanilla ls has never been particularly chainable - https://mywiki.wooledge.org/ParsingLs

eviks6• 2 years ago

They don't do one thing well since it's all text, not structured data, which makes chained analysis a challenge, which leads to the desire for integration

amelius• 2 years ago

I agree with this.

If they want something that is easy to use in a non-scriptable way, maybe they should replicate Norton Commander instead.

from-nibly• 2 years ago

If you like that philosophy check out nushell. They go pretty hard core on that and they can because of structured output

vunderba2• 2 years ago

Eza is great. I was pleasantly surprised at how nice the mime type icons meshed with the terminal.

treve• 2 years ago

It's a rite of passage. I had some colorful 'dir' alternatives on MS-DOS 5 and eventually made my own with Turbo Pascal. Easy & fun afternoon project

cb3217• 2 years ago

lc: https://github.com/c-blake/lc (in Nim).

medv• 2 years ago

Also “walk” is great for interactive navigation.

- https://github.com/antonmedv/walk

bawolff• 2 years ago

Tbh, i dont understand why people want to rewrite ls of all things.

Like don't get me wrong, if they had fun, that's great.

But all i use ls for is getting a list of files. I barely ever even use the -la options. There just doesn't seem like a lot of room for improvement in something so simple.

roywashere• 2 years ago

Well, recursive display is nice, I guess, as well as searching on partial filenames

benrutter• 2 years ago

I think the standard ls doesn't have much in terms of color/icons, so its simplicity probably makes it a great side project for improving on.

Not a big surface area, some easy improvements. A whole lot less stressful than rewriting grep (although I'm massively grateful Burnt Sushi did such a crazy thing)

abnry• 2 years ago

I barely ever even use the -la options.

Certainly I use these less than plain "ls," but digging through hidden files and folders and looking at timestamps is very important for me.

dhruvkb4• 2 years ago

Hi, author of `pls`[1] here. I started `pls` as a hobby project to scratch a personal itch: a "prettier" alternative to `ls`, with more colors and customisable icons. I also wanted to learn Rust as a secondary motivation.

But as I added more and more features to it, it has become a good tool that does a number of things that `ls` doesn't do (unless you chain it with other tools like `sort` or `grep`) and even other `ls` replacements don't do.

So even though `ls` is fantastic as-is, it's always fun to build something of your own, add a little more polish in areas that matter to you and put it out there to see if it resonates with more people.

[1] https://pls.cli.rs

bastardoperator• 2 years ago

I also used eza to replace the tree command with the --tree flag.

triyanox9• 2 years ago

Thanks for the great list! Yep, eza and g are fantastic - I actually use eza daily and love how g handles git integration. What made me excited to experiment with lla was playing with the plugin architecture. While these other tools have great built-in features, I wanted to see if I could make something where the community could easily add their own capabilities without touching the core code. Kind of like how vim and neovim handle plugins. Got inspired by how people keep building these ls alternatives to scratch their own unique itches. Figured why not make it easier for everyone to scratch their own itch through plugins? Still very much an experiment, but it's been fun seeing what's possible!

ZoomZoomZoom• 2 years ago

Take a look at lc (but not the terminal screenshots! ;)): https://github.com/c-blake/lc

lc is a highly configurable "multi-dimensional"[1] file lister written in Nim focused on flexibility and configurability.

Key features:

- Multi-level sorting by combinations of attributes like size, time, and file type, with user-defined precedence

- Configurable file kind sorting order

- Value-dependent coloring for file attributes such as timestamps, permissions, or sizes.

- Abbreviations: Automatically shorten filenames, user/group names or symlink targets.

- File type classification: Integrates libmagic for file type inspection.

- Hyperlink support

- Per-directory configs: custom behaviors for specific directories using local tweak files (.lc).

- Lightweight (~900 lines of code) with only author's CLI library "cligen" and Nim's stdlib as dependencies.

and more.

[1] https://github.com/c-blake/lc#vector-typemulti-dimensionalit...

dhruvkb4• 2 years ago

I wanted to plug `pls`[1], a tool that I wrote and maintain. It does a few things that `eza` (another great tool nonetheless, and a massive inspiration) cannot do[2].

[1] https://pls.cli.rs [2]: https://pls.cli.rs/about/comparison/

imoverclocked• 2 years ago

Did anyone here use Genera on an original lisp machine? It had a pseudo-graphical interface and a directory listing provided clickable results. It would be really neat if we could use escaping to confer more information to the terminal about what a particular piece of text means.

Feature-request: bring back clickable ls results!

Bonus points for defining a new term type and standard for this.

dotancohen• 2 years ago

  > Feature-request: bring back clickable ls results!

Doesn't your desktop (or distro) have a graphical file manager? On KDE it's Dolphin, which ex-Windows users absolutely love. I don't know what it would be on Gnome or other desktops.

shakna• 2 years ago

My ssh client also supports mouse events, though.

mabster• 2 years ago

I'm not going to speak for Linux, but on Mac the Finder is annoying enough that I ended up using CLI for file manipulation (ranger).

yjftsjthsd-h• 2 years ago

It's not really that, but have you tried ranger?

rphln• 2 years ago

There's already `ls --hyperlink` for clickable results, but that depends on your terminal supporting the URL escape sequence.

westurner• 2 years ago

  $ man ls | grep '\--hyperlink' -A 1
  --hyperlink[=WHEN]
         hyperlink file names WHEN

db48x2• 2 years ago

This is nice, but a poor substitute for what Genera was doing.

You see, Genera knows the actual type of everything that is clickable. When a program needs an input, objects of the wrong type _lose their interactivity_ for the duration. So if you list the files in some directory, the names of those files are indeed links that you can click on. Clicking on one would bring up a context menu of relevant actions (view, edit, print, delete, etc). If a program asks for a filename as input then clicking on a file instead supplies the file object to the program. Clicking on objects of other types does nothing.

mbivert2• 2 years ago

Maybe some aspects of the Plan9 UI? (rio/9term, plumber; acme as well).

You should be able to get this to work on Unix with plan9port.

bornfreddy• 2 years ago

I use git command line interface. Not because it is good (it isn't) or because I enjoy suffering (I think I don't), but because it is a standard on all the machines that have, you know, git.

What good is a ls alternative if I need to install it everywhere I need ls? I'd prefer using the standard ls even if it is not ideal. But maybe that's just me.

SoftTalker• 2 years ago

Even ls isn't standard on all machines. GNU ls is different from BSD ls.

mshockwave• 2 years ago

This is also one of the reasons I write C++ with vim without any auto-completion nor fancy plugins (I do use syntax highlighting though, but I think it comes by default with vim nowadays), as well as using GNU screen -- not every machines install tmux by default, surprisingly. In case I need to login into some random Linux box, I'm sure I'll be almost as productive as I am on my own machine.

easton• 2 years ago

I’ve been on machines in the last few years that didn’t have screen either. Maybe it was a minimal install or something, but I specifically remember having to install it to get some long running stuff going.

(Thinking it was Ubuntu server, but guessing someone will correct me)

deredede• 2 years ago

I assume this is tongue-in-cheek, but I don't think the comparison works at all.

I spend maybe 1% of my working hours (being generous) using `ls` and something like 50% (likely more) using my editor.

If there is some alternative to `ls` that makes my `ls` workflows 2x faster, my productivity increases by 0.5%. If I use a sub-optimal editor that makes my workflow 2x slower, I lose 25% of my productivity.

When I need to login to a remote box, I am also very likely to need to use `ls` since I am less familiar than on my own machine, whereas I am unlikely to do any sort of heavy development work (typically I just need to edit a couple configuration files, or do some git operations).

kazinator• 2 years ago

You mean, you're almost as unproductive on your development machine as on a random remote system that has no tools. And you somehow regard this as some sort of playing field leveling that generates an advantage.

Imagine a car mechanic that won't use a big hydraulic lift that hoists a car in seconds and lets him walk under it, claiming that by using a manually cranked portable jack, he can be almost as productive when fixing something by the roadside with emergency equipment as he is in his garage.

If you ever meet such a mechanic you can be sure that he programs computers as a hobby.

whartung• 2 years ago

I did the same thing back in they day.

I developed on SCO (and, later, Unixware) on a PC, all of the clients were running the gamut of Unix OSes: HPUX, DGUX, AIX, SunOS, you name it.

Most of the time was spent on our box in the office, but I was constantly bouncing back and forth to client systems. Either on site, or over the modem. Having to juggle Termcaps and the whole thing. It was polyglot machine/OS world back then.

Just had to learn to get the best out of a baseline set of Unix tools. vi instead of emacs, awk instead of perl. Master those and never be left wanting on a new environment, so I can hit the ground running. No need to "bootstrap" (if the client would even let you, not always). Couldn't even rely on a C compiler.

eviks6• 2 years ago

What's the point of suffering everywhere if you don't enjoy it? It's not like using a better alternative prevents you from knowing how to use ls, but only in those cases where there is no better alternative

matheusmoreira5• 2 years ago

Ubiquitousness is certainly a major selling point. The GNU coreutils are everywhere. I've made my peace with bash and make because I know they're always gonna be there.

This doesn't mean there's no value in developing one's own tools. Contributing to other projects can be quite difficult and time consuning. GNU projects are even more so.

We shouldn't limit ourselves to POSIX stuff either. Better software and tools can and should be built. Every attempt is valuable. And who knows? It might just turn into a staple of Linux distributions some day.

iwontberude2• 2 years ago

The things I take for granted. This is a breath of fresh air! Way to rethink the fundamentals!

skrebbel• 2 years ago

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not.

iwontberude2• 2 years ago

For the record I was not being sarcastic but maybe I was feeling a bit too romantic or overly supportive of OP

vunderba2• 2 years ago

Sounds like a fun project. However, from the readme:

Efficient file listing: Optimized for speed, even in large directories

What exactly is it doing differently to optimize for speed? Isn't it just using the regular fs lib?

jeffbee2• 2 years ago

On my system it uses twice as much CPU as plain old ls in a directory with just 13k files. To recursively list a directory with 500k leaf files, lla needs > 10x as much CPU. Apparently it is both slower and with higher complexity.

inquisitive-me• 2 years ago

But it’s written in rust so it’s super fast. Did you take that into account when running your benchmarks? /s

triyanox9• 2 years ago

Will definitely prioritize optimization in the next releases. Planning to benchmark against ls on various systems and file counts to get this properly sorted.

niek_pas• 2 years ago

Not trying to “gotcha” you, but I would imagine that 10x the CPU of ls is still very little, or am I wrong?

matheusmoreira5• 2 years ago

What exactly makes ls faster?

triyanox9• 2 years ago

On the latest release the it can list a tree of 100 in depth with over 100k files in less than 100ms and if cached 40ms

monroewalker• 2 years ago

Other than colorization, what are people getting out of ls replacements like this? I've recently started using ranger which might replace my ls usage for the most part since it not only shows everything in the directory but has vim like shortcuts for filtering, sorting, and searching the directory as well as previewing files and entering other directories

Symbiote3• 2 years ago

ls does colored output. I'm surprised it's not the default for you.

cb3217• 2 years ago

If you run `dircolors --print-database|less` you will see that GNU ls only highlights/colors the path/filenames according to a simplistic scheme where a file can only resolve to one type even though on many terminals today "foreground overlays background overlays bold/italic/etc". (https://github.com/c-blake/lc#vector-typemulti-dimensionalit... has a more advanced idea.)

This tool by triyanox -- just from the screen shot if you click through -- will also colorize permission masks and sizes, dates, user & group.

dhruvkb4• 2 years ago

Hi, author of `pls`[1] here. `pls` goes above and beyond what is typically possible with `ls` without going so far as to become an entire TUI file explorer like Broot[2].

Among a few things it does that `ls` (and other alternatives like `eza` don't do) are: - icons (SVG icons in terminals that support it, Nerd Fonts otherwise) - advanced filtering using regex - advanced sorting across multiple sort bases - styles and colors using customisable rules

For someone wanting to make the output of `ls` prettier (with a few extra bells and whistles) without having to relearn a new workflow, something like an `ls` replacement makes more sense.

[1] https://pls.cli.rs [2]: https://dystroy.org/broot/

pmarreck• 2 years ago

pls looks useful and I will retain it but eza is giving more icons for more things via (this is my alias for `l`, basically)

`eza --long --hyperlink --header --all --icons --git --sort name`

also the hyperlink thing is useful

zvr2• 2 years ago

Creating command-line utilities is nice, but I personally lament the lack of man pages when people write something new.

triyanox9• 2 years ago

That's the amazing part I'm talking about the learning experience you get from weeks of working on something like that is better than reading countless documentations

zvr2• 2 years ago

Oh, of course the development is fun and exciting and a learning experience.

But before inviting others to use something, please think of how to make its use more clear. After all, I assume you post this so that people use it, not only admire your coding skills. There is a group of people who have learned to read and rely on man pages.

For example, the top-level README says:

-s, --sort <CRITERIA>: Sort by "name", "size", or "date"

OK, does "date" refer to creation date, modification date, access date? I can understand "size", but does it produce smallest-first or largest-first? It might not matter if... ah, no, there is no -r/--reverse flag. Can I have more than one "criteria" (since the plural is used)?

Getting answers for such questions now means I have to go read the code in src/args.rs and follow to the implementation of the various functions. And in a few days, when I have the same questions again and I have forgotten the options, I will again have to dive into the code.

Please consider providing a short man page. It documents the "calling interface" to your program and makes it easier to use. I usually start writing one even before implementing the whole thing, to clearly articulate what I expect the program to do.

seb1204• 2 years ago

While a man page or good documentation is maybe not too intriguing for you I consider it essential for other users to adopt. Maybe there are new or modern ways to create man pages that can be stimulating for your learning experience?

mellosouls• 2 years ago

I clicked on this (without noting "github") expecting an essay on the joys of building an alternative to ls.

This is basically a Show HN without a summary I think.

fwiw:

https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html

eviks6• 2 years ago

Excellent new idea re plugins, a lot of these tools are too inflexible !

cb3217• 2 years ago

`lc` mentioned elsethread [1] was always extensible with plugins for formatting and file-typing (but also always supported libmagic-based file-typology). There are other fairly distinctive ideas in `lc`, actually.. the README has a list.

While I like it and it's a good idea, I think the reality is that developers capable enough to write shared library/DLL plugins are more likely to just submit PRs and make such stuff built-in but maybe optional.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42229841

eviks6• 2 years ago

"Always" is just 4 years? Lc is also one of these new tools

more likely to just submit PRs and make such stuff built-in but maybe optional.

Which are more likely to just be rejected by the more conservative maintainers of the tool. That's the empowering beauty of plugins - no such barriers

yasser_kaddoura• 2 years ago

I have these aliases for various purposes:

# Different options to search for files

# da=36 cyan timestamps

alias ls="EZA_COLORS='da=36' eza --time-style=relative --color-scale=age"

alias lsa="ls --almost-all" # ignore . ..

alias l="ls --long --classify=always" # show file indicators

alias la="l --almost-all"

# Tree view

alias ltreea="ls --tree"

alias ltree="ltreea --level=2"

# Sort by time or size

alias lt="ls --long --sort=time"

alias lta="lt --almost-all"

# lsd is faster than eza

alias lss="lsd --long --total-size --sort=size --reverse"

alias lssa="lss --almost-all"

lla seems to go beyond what ls should do for some reason. Why show git and code complexity info? Just use tools dedicated for these things, otherwise, it will be an unmaintainable mess. If you can solve a problem easily with external tools, then there's no reason to add a feature for it.

tejohnso• 2 years ago

That's a great list. I have a similar list and the aliases grow out of frequently used arguments. For example, I found myself often doing an ls -Altch and so lsth was born. I find that aliases that or born of frequently used arguments are easily remembered. Over time that one grew to include a pipe to head because most of the time I just want to see the top 20 or so most recently modified files in the directory.

p2detar• 2 years ago

Coloring files of the same file-type is my favorite feature. Is the extension used to group them or a MIME-header parser? I guess the extension, since it is faster.

Symbiote3• 2 years ago

This is also part of GNU ls, at least.

  man dir_colors

I think.

johnisgood• 2 years ago

You are right.

triyanox9• 2 years ago

Thanks for all the feedback! Let me clarify a few things about lla. The most amazing part of this project wasn't just building another ls alternative - it was the incredible learning journey. Building a systems tool in Rust while implementing a plugin architecture taught me more in a few weeks than months of reading could have. Yes, it does more than traditional ls, and that's intentional. The plugin system came from scratching my own itch of constantly switching between different terminal tools. Each feature added was a chance to dive deeper into systems programming and Unix internals. The performance still needs work, and the documentation could be better. But that's the beauty of open source - you ship it, learn from the feedback, and keep improving. Building in public is an incredible way to level up your skills. For anyone considering a similar project: pick a common tool you use daily and try reimagining it. You'll be surprised how much you learn along the way.

porridgeraisin• 2 years ago

One slept on filesystem cli tool on linux is `gio`. So it comes with glib2. But today glib2 is a dependency of vte, polkit, pipewire, ffmpeg, the entire gtk ecosystem,... you get the point. So you can basically depend on it being there on most linux installs, especially desktop.

Checkout the man page: https://www.mankier.com/1/gio

highlights:

- showing progress in `cp` equivalent

- Easy cli interface to freedesktop trash (!)

- tree command

- filesystem changes monitor (inotify wrapper)

INTPenis• 2 years ago

I had no idea gio could do all those things. I've been using it to mount my smartphone from the CLI.

compressedgas• 2 years ago

All of what is in the gio command used to be the gvfs-* command set.

voidUpdate• 2 years ago

I know its only for personal use, but I've never had any problems with ls not being "high-performance" enough...

darkfrancisco• 2 years ago

You can guess it is written in Rust before even checking the repo whenever you see that somebody made a clone of some popular systems tool like top, ls, cd, etc.

imp0cat• 2 years ago

I know, right?! It's a common theme.

But recently, there were two submissions here that actually turn the "rewrite in Rust" meme into something substantial.

The two factions of C++ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42231489 On "Safe" C++ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42186475

Be warned that the second one is a really long read!

Koshkin2• 2 years ago

I, for one, have been wishing for a high-performance, extensible alternative to emacs for a long time.

thebeardisred• 2 years ago

Thank you for being one of the few projects replacing a POSIX tool which properly sets the expectation that it's for personal use. It causes me no end of consternation that I see many tools introduced which provide only the barest minimum of functionality and skip over extended attributes, ACLs, and fail to keep compatibility with flags, or don't properly separate STDOUT & STDERR.

While these may be sufficient for a naive developer, this oversight then breaks many downstream tools.

Again though, thanks for sharing. Bringing your own spin and ideas into the world can be anxiety inducing and I'm pleased you went about this in a helpful and measured way!

concerndc1tizen• 2 years ago

Would you mind listing more common mistakes made by CLI developers?

telgareith• 2 years ago

These days: not building this such that they can be easily spit out as json and/or xml markup.

two_handfuls2• 2 years ago

Not obeying the --help flag.

fragmede• 2 years ago

not behaving the same as robust cli tools. -h and --help and -v and --verbose and --version

ksenzee• 2 years ago

Julia Evans had an interesting thread recently on “social rules” of the terminal: https://social.jvns.ca/@b0rk/113540676612640547

sphars• 2 years ago

This is a good, open-source resource for guidelines on creating CLIs, which goes over some common mistakes.

https://clig.dev/

matheusmoreira5• 2 years ago

If this is causing you any "consternation" at all, it means you expect too much from unpaid free software developers. The repository doesn't even have a sponsor link.

The software is provided as is, in the hope it will be useful, but without any warranty whatsoever.

All free and open source software licenses contain some version of the above statement.

All of this is implicitly for personal use. In the sense that it's not a product, just something people made because they needed a problem solved.

dimator• 2 years ago

Honestly, what's the point of comments like this? No shit, it's done for a personal hobby, you're not breaking new ground with that idea.

However, this is a website of opinions, and gp's opinion is valid, because this forum is where opinions go. It's not as though gp said to stop doing this project.

This pedantic finger wagging is just so rote.

ivanjermakov• 2 years ago

Does UNIX philosophy holds anymore? Most of the modern CLI tools I've seen here try to be all at once: file manager, git client, grep.

I wonder if it was always like this or we're getting further and further from the idea of keeping programs simple and open.

Cthulhu_2• 2 years ago

I would say it does; those tools rarely reimplement the functions you mention, but are abstractions on top of existing CLIs or libraries that do follow the UNIX philosophy.

This project in particular is not being sold as a drop-in replacement for ls.

dhruvkb4• 2 years ago

While you've specifically labeled this as "personal use", it is a commendable project that introduces some interesting new ideas. I might steal some ideas from it for my own `ls` alternative, `pls`[1].

[1] https://pls.cli.rs

Cthulhu_2• 2 years ago

"pls" as in "please give me a list of files"? Does `sudo pls` negate the "please"? :p

Koshkin2• 2 years ago

I didn't know that ls was missing plugins.

Show HN: I made an ls alternative for my personal use

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