this post was submitted on 07 Apr 2024
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14
eza (formerly exa, ls replacement) can now show the actual total size of directory contents (discuss.tchncs.de)
submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
18 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

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:

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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[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago (1 children)

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).

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Oh, I had no idea, time to change some aliases

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

Some of the distros actually just included an alias from exa to eza when the project forked. I didn't even realize I was using eza for a long time!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (3 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

It's subjective, but it looks better

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Function is what I want.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

You do you choom

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago (2 children)

It's written in a safe language

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

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.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

We have tried the "sufficiently experienced and disciplined developer" approach for decades and it just doesn't work.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

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.

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:

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.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago

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

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

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".

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

this looks like one is using the SI 1000-based units, instead of the binary 1024-based. im pretty sure du has a --si option.

the B (for bytes) is omitted, so it each is ambiguous to whether its MiB (mebibytes -- binary) or MB (megabytes -- SI).

i may be wrong on the technicals but u get the jist.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

The difference is too large for that. 184 MB is 176 MiB not 149.