A modern replacement for ls

# exa [](https://travis-ci.org/ogham/exa)

[exa](https://the.exa.website/) is a replacement for `ls` written in Rust.

## Rationale

**exa** is a modern replacement for the command-line program ls that ships with Unix and Linux operating systems, 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**.

By deliberately making some decisions differently, exa attempts to be a more featureful, more user-friendly version of ls.

## Screenshots




## Options

exa’s options are almost, but not quite, entirely unlike `ls`'s.

### Display Options

- **-1**, **--oneline**: display one entry per line - **-G**, **--grid**: display entries as a grid (default) - **-l**, **--long**: display extended details and attributes - **-R**, **--recurse**: recurse into directories - **-T**, **--tree**: recurse into directories as a tree - **-x**, **--across**: sort the grid across, rather than downwards - **--colo[u]r**: when to use terminal colours - **--colo[u]r-scale**: highlight levels of file sizes distinctly

### Filtering Options

- **-a**, **--all**: show hidden and 'dot' files - **-d**, **--list-dirs**: list directories like regular files - **-L**, **--level=(depth)**: limit the depth of recursion - **-r**, **--reverse**: reverse the sort order - **-s**, **--sort=(field)**: which field to sort by - **--group-directories-first**: list directories before other files - **-D**, **--only-dirs**: list only directories - **--git-ignore**: ignore files mentioned in `.gitignore` - **-I**, **--ignore-glob=(globs)**: glob patterns (pipe-separated) of files to ignore

Pass the `--all` option twice to also show the `.` and `..` directories.

### Long View Options

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

- **-b**, **--binary**: list file sizes with binary prefixes - **-B**, **--bytes**: list file sizes in bytes, without any prefixes - **-g**, **--group**: list each file's group - **-h**, **--header**: add a header row to each column - **-H**, **--links**: list each file's number of hard links - **-i**, **--inode**: list each file's inode number - **-m**, **--modified**: use the modified timestamp field - **-S**, **--blocks**: list each file's number of file system blocks - **-t**, **--time=(field)**: which timestamp field to use - **-u**, **--accessed**: use the accessed timestamp field - **-U**, **--created**: use the created timestamp field - **-@**, **--extended**: list each file's extended attributes and sizes - **--git**: list each file's Git status, if tracked or ignored - **--time-style**: how to format timestamps

- Valid **--color** options are **always**, **automatic**, and **never**. - Valid sort fields are **accessed**, **changed**, **created**, **extension**, **Extension**, **inode**, **modified**, **name**, **Name**, **size**, **type**, and **none**. Fields starting with a capital letter sort uppercase before lowercase. The modified field has the aliases **date**, **time**, and **newest**, while its reverse has the aliases **age** and **oldest**. - Valid time fields are **modified**, **changed**, **accessed**, and **created**. - Valid time styles are **default**, **iso**, **long-iso**, and **full-iso**.



## Installation

exa is written in [Rust](http://www.rust-lang.org). You will need rustc version 1.17.0 or higher. The recommended way to install Rust is from the official download page. Once you have it set up, a simple `make install` will compile exa and install it into `/usr/local/bin`.

exa depends on [libgit2](https://github.com/alexcrichton/git2-rs) 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`.

If you intend to compile for musl you will need to use