Wrapper script for exa to give it nearly identical switches and appearance to ls. Also automatically adds --git switch when in a git repository.

exa-wrapper.sh

#!/bin/bash

help() {
    cat << EOF
  Options:
   -1  one file per line
   -k  bytes
   -F  classify
   -R  recurse
   -r  reverse
   -d  don't list directory contents
   -G  group directories first *
   -I  ignore [GLOBS]
   -i  show inodes
   -S  sort by file size
   -t  sort by modified time
   -u  sort by accessed time
   -U  sort by created time *
   -X  sort by extension
   -T  tree *
   -L  level [DEPTH] *
   -s  file system blocks
   -g  git status of files *
   -x  list by lines, not columns
   -H  help
    * not used in ls
EOF
    exit
}

exa_opts=()
rev=0

while getopts ':aAt1lFRrdIiTkLsuUSrghxXG' arg; do
  case $arg in
    a) exa_opts+=(-a -a) ;;
    A) exa_opts+=(-a) ;;
    t) exa_opts+=(-s modified); ((++rev)) ;;
    u) exa_opts+=(-us accessed); ((++rev)) ;;
    U) exa_opts+=(-Us created); ((++rev)) ;;
    S) exa_opts+=(-s size); ((++rev)) ;;
    G) exa_opts+=( --group-directories-first) ;;
    r) ((++rev)) ;;
    k) exa_opts+=( -B) ;;
    g) exa_opts+=(--git) ;;
    s) exa_opts+=( -S) ;;
    X) exa_opts+=( -s extension) ;;
    1|l|F|R|d|I|i|T|L|x|h) exa_opts+=(-"$arg") ;;
    H) help ;;
    *) printf 'Error: exa-wrapper\n       -H for help\n' >&2; exit 1
    ;;
  esac
done

shift "$((OPTIND - 1))"

if (( rev == 1 )); then
    exa_opts+=(-r)
fi

if [[ $(git rev-parse --is-inside-work-tree 2> /dev/null) == true ]]; then
  exa --color-scale --color=always --git -gH "${exa_opts[@]}" "$@"
else
  exa --color-scale --color=always -gH "${exa_opts[@]}" "$@"
fi

Hi. Your modifications aren't going to work as you intend. I'm not exactly sure what you want to do, so I'm not sure how to make the h switch work as you want, but you will need to remove the Hs from lines 62 and 64 and add it to the letters in line 34. You also need to remove h from line 48 and make a new line to make it do the thing that you want, as -h adds the header over the columns in exa and -H adds the links column, so you need to override them. Cheers.

Ah, I see that the a flag is already showing the size in human readable format. I was trying to replicate the muscle-memory of typing ls -lah so I can see everything in column format with human-readable file sizes.

Yeah, I know what you mean. The whole reason I did this in the first place was that I had years of muscle memory typing ls -Al and exa has no -A switch so came up with an error. Maybe I should modify the script to make it even more identical to ls for those like yourself. I always had an ls -h --colour=auto alias.

Hi, I have updated the wrapper script to include the -h switch for human-readable and added a couple of options.

Hi, I have updated the wrapper script to include the -h switch for human-readable and added a couple of options.

It works great! Thanks for doing that!