So, exa became eza. Thanks. https://github.com/ogham/exa

exa is unmaintained, use the fork eza instead. (This repository isn’t archived because the only person with the rights to do so is unreachable).

I just tested this and the reported sizes with eza -l --total-size are wrong for me. I compare it to du --human-readable --apparent-size --all --max-depth 1 and with opening properties in my Dolphin filemanager. Some are way off. In example du and Dolphin report for a certain projects folder of mine “149M”, while eza reports “184M”.

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.

Off topic, but maybe someone will appreciate this. I wrote a function to get the size of contents of a dir a while back. It has a couple of dependencies (gc, gwc at a glance), but should be fairly portable. The results are sorted from greatest to least as shown in the screenshot.

function szup() {

description='
#:    Title: szup
#: Synopsis: sort all items within a directory according to size
#:     Date: 2016-05-30
#:  Version: 0.0.5
#:  Options: -h | --help: print short usage info
#:         : -v | --version: print version number
'

funcname=$(echo "$description" | grep '^#:    Title: ' | sed 's/#:    Title: //g')
version=$(echo "$description" | grep '^#:  Version: ' | sed 's/#:  Version: //g')
updated="$(echo "$description" | grep '^#:     Date: ' | sed 's/#:     Date: //g')"

	function usage() {
		printf "\n%s\n" "$funcname : $version : $updated"
		printf "%s\n" ""
	}

	function sortdir() {
		Chars="$(printf "    %s" "inspecting " "$(pwd)" | wc -c)"
		divider=====================
		divider=$divider$divider$divider$divider
		format="    %-${Chars}.${Chars}s %35s\n"
		totalwidth="$(ls -1 | /usr/local/bin/gwc -L)"
		totalwidth=$(echo $totalwidth | grep -o [0-9]\\+)
		Chars=$(echo $Chars | grep -o [0-9]\\+)
		if [ "$totalwidth" -lt "$Chars" ]; then
			longestvar="$Chars"
		else
			longestvar="$totalwidth"
		fi
		shortervar=$(/Users/danyoung/bin/qc "$longestvar"*.8)
		shortervar=$(printf "%1.0f\n" "$shortervar")
		echo "$shortervar"
		printf "\n    %s\n" "inspecting $(pwd)"
		printf "    %$shortervar.${longestvar}s\n" "$divider"
		theOutput="$(du -hs "${theDir}"/* | gsort -hr)"
		Condensed="$(echo -n "$theOutput" | awk '{ print $1","$2 }')"
		unset arr
		declare -a arr
		arr=($(echo "$Condensed"))
		Count="$(echo "$(printf "%s\n" "${arr[@]}")" | wc -l)"
		Count=$((Count-1))
		for i in $(seq 1 $Count); do
		read var1 var2 <<< "$(printf "%s\n" "${arr[$i]}" | sed 's/,/ /g')"
		printf "   %5s    %-16s\n" "$var1" "${var2//\/*\//./}"
		done
		echo
	}

	case "$1" in
		-h|--help)
			usage
			return 0
			;;
		*)
			:
			;;
	esac

     if [ -z "$1" ]; then
             oldDir="$(pwd)"
             cd "${1}"
             local theDir="$(pwd)"
             sortdir
             cd "$oldDir"
             return 0
     else
     		:
             oldDir="$(pwd)"
             cd "${1}"
             local theDir="$(pwd)"
             sortdir
             cd "$oldDir"
             return 0
     fi
}```


Screenshot isn't working. I'll reply to this with it.

Awesome tool! If you use it with nerdfonts, you can have nice icons too!

Note: it is not a 1:1 replacement for ls! Wait for uutils to be completed, and then start to use it.

Off topic, but maybe someone will appreciate this. I wrote a function to get the size of contents of a dir a while back. It has a couple of dependencies (gc, gwc at a glance), but should be fairly portable (correct paths for your system). The results are sorted from greatest to least as shown in the screenshot. The purpose was to be able to see directory sizes, which is the topic of this post, so I figured I’d share.

Hope it’s useful to someone. Free to modify as desired.

function szup() {

description='
#:    Title: szup
#: Synopsis: sort all items within a directory according to size
#:     Date: 2016-05-30
#:  Version: 0.0.5
#:  Options: -h | --help: print short usage info
#:         : -v | --version: print version number
'

funcname=$(echo "$description" | grep '^#:    Title: ' | sed 's/#:    Title: //g')
version=$(echo "$description" | grep '^#:  Version: ' | sed 's/#:  Version: //g')
updated="$(echo "$description" | grep '^#:     Date: ' | sed 's/#:     Date: //g')"

	function usage() {
		printf "\n%s\n" "$funcname : $version : $updated"
		printf "%s\n" ""
	}

	function sortdir() {
		Chars="$(printf "    %s" "inspecting " "$(pwd)" | wc -c)"
		divider=====================
		divider=$divider$divider$divider$divider
		format="    %-${Chars}.${Chars}s %35s\n"
		totalwidth="$(ls -1 | /usr/local/bin/gwc -L)"
		totalwidth=$(echo $totalwidth | grep -o [0-9]\\+)
		Chars=$(echo $Chars | grep -o [0-9]\\+)
		if [ "$totalwidth" -lt "$Chars" ]; then
			longestvar="$Chars"
		else
			longestvar="$totalwidth"
		fi
		shortervar=$(/Users/*********/bin/qc "$longestvar"*.8)
		shortervar=$(printf "%1.0f\n" "$shortervar")
		echo "$shortervar"
		printf "\n    %s\n" "inspecting $(pwd)"
		printf "    %$shortervar.${longestvar}s\n" "$divider"
		theOutput="$(du -hs "${theDir}"/* | gsort -hr)"
		Condensed="$(echo -n "$theOutput" | awk '{ print $1","$2 }')"
		unset arr
		declare -a arr
		arr=($(echo "$Condensed"))
		Count="$(echo "$(printf "%s\n" "${arr[@]}")" | wc -l)"
		Count=$((Count-1))
		for i in $(seq 1 $Count); do
		read var1 var2 <<< "$(printf "%s\n" "${arr[$i]}" | sed 's/,/ /g')"
		printf "   %5s    %-16s\n" "$var1" "${var2//\/*\//./}"
		done
		echo
	}

	case "$1" in
		-h|--help)
			usage
			return 0
			;;
		*)
			:
			;;
	esac

     if [ -z "$1" ]; then
             oldDir="$(pwd)"
             cd "${1}"
             local theDir="$(pwd)"
             sortdir
             cd "$oldDir"
             return 0
     else
     		:
             oldDir="$(pwd)"
             cd "${1}"
             local theDir="$(pwd)"
             sortdir
             cd "$oldDir"
             return 0
     fi
}```


![](https://lemmy.sdf.org/pictrs/image/2a0578ce-1fd3-4e81-b9e7-41a57eb4d62a.png)