ez

My personal wrapper for the eza command line utility.

Feature Overview

• better defaults
• automatic paging
• config file

Install

Clone this repository anywhere. If you have just, you can do just install, otherwise run cargo install --path .. Requires rust to be installed.

Usage

Dependencies

Requires eza and a pager to be found in PATH. The default pager is less but can be configured.

Command line

Tip: ez --help will display the help message. ez -- --help will display eza's help message.

There are a only a few command line options:

• -g Display in grid mode. Sets --grid when calling eza.
• -t Display in tree mode. Sets --tree when calling eza.
• -1 Display in single line mode. Sets --oneline when calling eza.
• -l Enable long-listing. Sets --long when calling eza.
• -i Respect .gitignore. Sets --git-ignore when calling eza.
• -p <WHEN> When to page output. Can be auto, always, or never.
• -debug Enable debug mode. Describes the current configuration with all config and options merged, but doesn't actually call eza.

Some other notes:

• -g, -t, and -1 are exclusive. Only one may be set, or none.
  • The default display mode is handled by eza.
  • If no display mode is set, it defaults to grid.
  • If no display mode is set AND -l is set, then oneline is used.
  • eza supports specifying both -g and -l.
• In debug mode, if you don't see the pager command/args listed, that means ez decided not to page output.

If you want to override any eza options manually, pass them in after --:

ez -t -- --color=never
ez ~/.Downloads -- --hyperlink
ez -l ~/.config -- -o

Config file

You can create a user config file in the standard location for your platform:

• linux: $HOME/.config/ez/config.toml
• windows: $HOME\AppData\Roaming\ez\config.toml
• mac: $HOME/Library/Application Support/ez/config.toml

These options override defaults, but cli options override everything.

An example config file can be found here, with all the default values.

Motivation

Defaults

eza has a lot of options, so I wanted my favorite defaults to be available automatically without using aliases.

Pager support

eza and ls don't support automatic paging with colors, which is a common feature for modern user-focused cli tools.

Config file

I prefer to have a lighter .bashrc when convenient, since it has to run every time bash is started. It's better to have a config file that's only loaded when the specific tool is used.

Why eza?

I'm currently using eza as my ls alternative. It has a lot more features than just being a basic ls wrapper (e.g. tree display, gradient coloring, icons), so I decided not to reinvent the wheel.