exa

exa is a modern replacement for the ls command, written in Rust by Benjamin Sago (ogham). With over 20,000 stars as of 2026, exa aims to be a more feature-rich and visually appealing alternative to ls, using colors to distinguish file types and metadata, and displaying additional information like Git status for each file. Although the original exa project is now in maintenance mode (with eza as the community-maintained fork), exa remains widely used. Key features include: colorized output using the LS_COLORS environment variable with sensible defaults (different colors for directories, executables, symlinks, sockets, and various file extensions), Git integration (showing file modification status with symbols for modified, staged, new, and conflicted files in the --git flag), tree view (--tree flag for recursive directory listing with tree-like indentation and configurable depth), grid view for compact display, long format (--long for detailed view with permissions, ownership, size, and dates), human-readable file sizes (--long with automatic unit conversion to KB, MB, GB), file metadata display including extended attributes, inode numbers, links count, blocks, and security context, custom date and time formats, sorting by various criteria (name, size, extension, modification time, creation time, accessed time, inode, and none), filtering by file type (--only-dirs, --only-files), recursive listing with configurable depth, viewing hidden files (--all flag), header row in long format, and cross-platform support (Linux, macOS, FreeBSD, and Windows via WSL).