Make -t without arguments behave like in ls

[heptal]

This -t thing really is a problem, it's flow-breaking and existing ls-based alias-breaking. It's basically infuriating because everything else works so well. Even an env variable I could set would be great.

Flag -t needs a value (choices: modified, accessed, created)
To sort newest files last, try "--sort newest", or just "-snew"

#294 (comment)
#284 (comment)

[varenc]

agreed 100% on this. I love exa! But the lack of -t really breaks my flow. Whenever this happens, I find myself consistently using \ls -ltr to get around my ls=exa alias. The -snew option is nice, but longer to type and I find multiple character single dash options a bit confusing. (it looks like each character is its own seperate option). The helpful error message also makes it clear exa knows what I'm trying to do.

For now, I've set up a little function that ls maps to. Usually, this function just runs exa directly, but it also checks if the args contain a single dash t option and if they do it removes t and adds -snew to the args passed to exa. It's quite hacky and bugs out sometimes, but it is generally what I want. I like this comment which suggests a --legacy option to enable more ls compliant behavior like this.

[RandomErrorMessage]

Check out LSD for a similar tool that is actually a drop-in replacement for LS.

[rxw1]

Check out LSD for a similar tool that is actually a drop-in replacement for LS.

+1, LSD is really great. Highly recommended.

[madebyollin]

Since I prefer exa to lsd apart from this particular bit of broken muscle memory...

ls() {
    if [ "$1" = "-ltr" ]; then
        exa -lsnew "${@:2}"
    elif [ "$1" = "-lrt" ]; then
        exa -lsnew "${@:2}"
    else
        exa "$@"
    fi
}

(In .profile, .bashrc, whatever, instead of the usual alias ls=exa)

[kaushalyap]

@ogham @nwin Any plans to fix this ?

[ariasuni]

Latest version of exa adds support for optional argument for flags, so it will be possible to change -t into a valid flag on its own that behaves like in ls. I’m not sure if there’s any objection from the author for this specific behavior, though.

Edit: one important note is that in ls, -t (controls sorting) and --time (controls displayed time) do something very different.

[ahcm]

Basically have the same experience, as varenc writes.

[WhyNotHugo]

I've taken a shot at this: #1102

Seems to work, but PR still needs work.

[eggbean]

This wrapper script is a solution for anybody that it still concerned about this. It makes exa behave like ls as close as possible.

https://gist.github.com/eggbean/74db77c4f6404dd1f975bd6f048b86f8