ls-go

A more colorful, user-friendly implementation of ls written in Go.

You want to be able to glean a lot of information as quickly as possible from ls. Colors can help your mind parse the information. You can configure ls to color the output a little bit. Configuring ls is a hassle though, and the colors are limited.

Instead, you can use ls-go. It is highly colored by default. It has much fewer flags so you can get the behavior you want more easily. The colors are beautiful and semantic. A terminal with xterm-256 colors is required.

Features

• [x] Should work on Linux, MacOS, and Windows.
• [x] Outputs beautiful, semantic colors by default.
• [x] Show paths to symlinks, and explicitly show broken links.
• [x] Recurse down subdirectories.
• [x] Emojis (if you're into that).
• [x] Supports Nerd Fonts.

Usage

Of course, you can use an alias to save some typing and get your favorite options.

Show locations of symlink.

List subdirectories recursively.

Nerd Font Support

ls-go works with Nerd Fonts. Simply add --nerd-font or -n to get file-specific icons. This won't work unless you have a Nerd Font installed and selected in your terminal emulator.

Install

Run go install github.com/ilius/ls-go@latest. Or clone the repository and run go install within ls-go directory.

Prior Art

This is inspired by athityakumar/colorls and monsterkodi/color-ls, ported to Go, with various modifications.

Known Issues

It fails on directories without executable permissions. The standard /bin/ls will also fail when reading non-executable directories, but only with certain options, like ls -l, ls --color=always (or ls -G on MacOS). This is because file metadata is needed to determine things like colors, and directories need to be executable to obtain the metadata of the contents. For example:

# create dir without -x permission
$ mkdir -m 644 test

# add a file
$ sudo touch test/foo

# plain `ls` still works
$ /bin/ls test
foo

# but `ls -l` fails
$ /bin/ls -l test

# and so does ls-go
$ ls-go test

Contributing

Contributions are muchly appreciated! Want to add a glyph for another file type? Did I forget an edge case? Is there another option that would be useful? Submit a PR! You might want to submit an issue first to make sure it's something I'd want to add though.

Flags

--all, -a

Do not ignore entries starting with .

--almost-all, -A

Do not list implied . and ..

--sort=COLUMN

Sort by given column instead of basename.
Supported values:

• none
• size
• time
• extension
• kind
• inode
• links: sort by number of hard links
• filesize

--size, -s

Print the size of each file.

--human-readable, -h

With -l or -s / --size, print sizes like 1K, 234M, 2G, etc.

--si

Like --human-readable, but use powers of 1000, not 1024.

--bytes

Print sizes in bytes.

--blocks

Show allocated number of blocks (like ls -s) as a new column.

--time=TIME_TYPE

Change the default of using modification times (mtime).

• Access time: atime, access, use
• Change time: ctime, status, change

With -l, it determines which time to show.
With --sort=time, sorts by given time (newest first).

--time-style=STYLE

Time/date format with -l.
Can set environment variable LSGO_TIME_STYLE to use as default (except for --json).

Supported time styles:

• full-iso or full

  • Go format: 2006-01-02 15:04:05.999999999 Z0700
  • Unix format: %Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S.%N %z

• long-iso or long

  • Go format: 2006-01-02 15:04
  • Unix format: %Y-%m-%d %H:%M

• iso

  • Go format: 01-02 15:04
  • Unix format: %m-%d %H:%M

• relative or rel

  • Show relative to current time, for example "1 day, 21:24:23 ago"

• + sign followed by a Unix time format (see man date)

--full-time

Shortcut to -l --time-style=full-iso.

--mtime, --modified

Include modification time (of file contents).

--ctime, --changed

Include change time (of file contents or metadata).

--atime, --accessed

Include access time.

--owner

Include owner and group.

--group

Show group (without long mode).

--no-group, -G

Hide group name (with -l).

--numeric-uid-gid, --numeric, -n

Like -l, but list numeric user and group IDs.

--perm, --mode

Include permissions for owner, group, and other.

--perm-oct, --mode-oct, --oct, --octal-permissions

Include permissions / mode in octal format.

--inode, -i

Print the index number (inode number) of each file.

--long, -l

Include size, date, owner, and permissions.

--oneline, -1

Show one file per line.

--horizontal, -x

List entries by lines instead of by columns.

--vertical

List entries by columns.

--compact

Try to fit more columns in many-files-per-line modes (vertical/horizontal).

--vbar

Show vertical bars between files in a row, or between columns in --long or --oneline mode.

--quoting-style=STYLE

Use given quoting style for entry names.
This overrides QUOTING_STYLE environment variable.
Supported values:

• literal
• shell
• shell-always
• shell-escape
• shell-escape-always
• c
• escape
• none

--literal, -N

Shortcut to --quoting-style=literal.
Print entry names without quoting.

--escape, -b

Shortcut to --quoting-style=escape.
Print C-style escapes for nongraphic characters.

--directory, --list-dirs, -d

List directories themselves, not their contents.

--dirs-first, --dir-first, --group-directories-first

Show directories before files.

--dirs-only, --dir-only, --only-dirs

Only show directories.

--files

Only show files.

--dereference, -L

When showing file information for a symbolic link, show information for the file the link references rather than for the link itself.

--links

Show paths for symlinks.

--link-rel

Show symlinks as relative paths if shorter than absolute path.

--reverse, -r

Reverse order while sorting.

--stats

Show statistics.

--icons

Show folder icon before directory name.

--nerd-font

Show nerd font glyphs before file names.

--recursive, -R

Traverse all directories recursively.

--find=PATTERN

Filter items with a regexp.

--color=

Accepted values:

• --color=always, --color=yes, --color=y, --color=
• --color=never, --color=no, --color=n
• --color=auto (default): enables colors only when stdout is connected to a terminal

Whether or not to colorize the output.
auto means if stdout connected to a terminal.

--header

Add a header row with -l / --long or -1 / --oneline.

--json

Print JSON-encoded lines instead of tables.

--csv

Print a CSV table.

--minsize=SIZE

Minimum file size (in bytes).

--maxsize=SIZE

Maximum file size (in bytes).

-t

Shortcut to --sort=time.
Sort by time, newest first.
See --time.

-c

Shortcut to --time=ctime.
With -lt: sort by, and show, ctime (time of last modification of file status information).
With -l: show ctime and sort by name.
Otherwise: sort by ctime, newest first.

-u

Shortcut to --time=use.
With -lt: sort by, and show, access time.
With -l: show access time and sort by name.
Otherwise: sort by access time, newest first.

-U

Shortcut to --sort=none.
Do not sort (list entries in directory order).

-S

Shortcut to --sort=size.
Sort by file size, largest first.

-X

Shortcut to --sort=extension.
Sort alphabetically by entry extension.

--colors-json

Print colors in json format and exit.

--help-md

Show help in markdown format.

--help

Show usage message.

--version

Show version.