11mo ago

eza (formerly exa, ls replacement) can now show the actual total size of directory contents

cross-posted from: https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/13814482

I just noticed that eza can now display total disk space used by directories!
I think this is pretty cool. I wanted it for a long time.
There are other ways to get the information of course. But having it integrated with all the other options for listing directories is fab. eza has features like --git-awareness, --tree display, clickable --hyperlink, filetype --icons and other display, permissions, dates, ownerships, and other stuff. being able to mash everything together in any arbitrary way which is useful is handy. And of course you can --sort=size
docs:
 
    
  --total-size               show the size of a directory as the size of all
                             files and directories inside (unix only)

  
It also (optionally) color codes the information. Values measures in kb, mb, and gb are clear. Here is a screenshot to show that:
 sh
    
eza --long -h --total-size --sort=oldest --no-permissions --no-user
 
  
Of course it take a little while to load large directories so you will not want to use by default.
Looks like it was first implemented Oct 2023 with some fixes since then. (Changelog). PR #533 - feat: added recursive directory parser with --total-size flag by Xemptuous

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45 comments

Why does ls need a replacement?
What does this do that ls cannot?
Edit: cheers for the downvote for valid questions!! Guess the reddit mindset never leaves some.
- aside from the subject of the post: the ones I miss when it's not available are git status/ignoring, icons, tree, excellent color coding.
  Here I cloned the eza repo and made some random changes.
  sh
  
  eza --long -h --no-user --no-time --almost-all --git --sort=date --reverse --icons
  Made some more changes and then combine git and tree, something I find is super helpful for overview:
  sh
  
  eza --long -h --no-user --no-time --git --sort=date --reverse --icons --tree --level=2 --git-ignore --no-permissions --no-filesize
  (weird icons are my fault for not setting up fonts properly in the terminal.)
  Colors all over the place are an innovation that has enabled me to use the terminal really at all. I truly struggle when I need to use b&w or less colorful environments. I will almost always install eza on any device even something that needs to be lean. It's not just pretty and splashy but it helps me correctly comprehend the information.
  I'd never want to get rid of ls and I don't personally alias it to to eza because I always want to have unimpeded access to the standard tooling. But I appreciate having a few options to do the same task in slightly different ways. And it's so nice to have all the options together in one application rather than needing a bunch of scripts and aliases and configurations. I don't think it does anything that's otherwise impossible but to get on with life it is helpful.
  
  Not sure I could get with the huge string of arguments, That needs to be shortened to follow the ls style of stacking letters behind minimal "-"
  Does look good but I prefer function to form.
  Interesting though
  
  oh of course there are abbreviated forms. I just used the long versions so that people who aren't framiliar can follow what I am doing without having to spend 10 mins cross referencing the man page.
  Likewise in the examples I used options that created a fairly very simple screenshot to clearly illustrate an answer to the question of what eza does that ls doesn't.
  I tend to use eza via a couple of aliases with sets of common preferences. Like in a git dir I want to sort by date. usually don't need to see the user column, the size or permissions (except when I do). I do want to see the dotfiles. So I have an appropriate line as eg (eza git). A great companion to gs.
- It's written in a safe language
  
  Not sure that really applies here since ls is usually a shell built-in so you can't exactly uninstall it, not to mention all this feature creep probably means exa/eza has a much larger attack surface.
  
  Does it use safe development practices though? Or is mainstream Rust development npm leftpad all over again with developers dumpster diving for dependencies to make their lives easier and more productive.
  There is potentially a price to pay for colour ansi graphics and emoji and it comes in the form of a large tree of often trivial third party crates of unknown quality which could potentially contain harmful code. Is it all audited? Do I want it on a company server with customer data or even on a desktop with my own data?
  The various gnu and bsd core utils are maintained by their projects and are self contained without external dependencies and have history. There are projects rewriting unix core utils in Rust (uutils) that seem to be less frivolous which are more to my taste. Most traditional unix utils have very limited functionality and have been extensively analyzed over many years by both people and tools which offsets a lot of the deficiencies of the implementation language.
  
  I am inclined to agree with you. See my comment in cross post of this thread.
  I'm just a home admin of my own local systems and while I try to avoid doing stuff that's too wacky, in the context I don't mind playing a bit fast n loose. If I screw it up, the consequences are my own.
  At work, I am an end user of systems with much higher grade of importance to lots of people. I would not be impressed to learn there was a bunch of novel bleeding edge stuff running on those systems. Administering them has a higher burden of care and responsibility and I expect the people in charge to apply more scrutiny. If it's screwed up, the consequences are on a lot of people with no agency over the situation.
  Just like other things done at small vs large scale. Most people with long hair don't wear a hairnet when cooking at home, although it is a requirement in some industrial food prep situations. Most home fridges don't have strict rules about how to store different kinds of foods to avoid cross contamination, nor do they have a thermometer which is checked regularly and logged to show the food is being stored appropriately. Although this needs to be done in a professional context. Pressures, risks and consequences are different.
  To summarize: I certainly hope sysadmins aren't on here installing every doohicky some dumbass like me suggests on their production systems. :D
  
  there's no such thing as safe language. People sent spaceships to moon with assembly. But there is one such thing as undereducated bootcamp grad developer.
  
  We have tried the "sufficiently experienced and disciplined developer" approach for decades and it just doesn't work.
  
  You're both right!
  
  True but when people speak of rust being safe they actually mean the way it deals with memory and that it is harder to arbitrability view the mem space it uses unlike C and it's children.
- It's subjective, but it looks better
  
  Function is what I want.
  
  good design is a function on its own
  better defaults, icons, color coding, and other optional views improve on the functions of the default ls
  
  You do you choom

45 comments