eza(1)

NAME

eza — a modern replacement for ls

SYNOPSIS

eza [options] [files...]

eza is a modern replacement for ls. It uses colours for information by default, helping you distinguish between many types of files, such as whether you are the owner, or in the owning group.

It also has extra features not present in the original ls, such as viewing the Git status for a directory, or recursing into directories with a tree view.

EXAMPLES

eza Lists the contents of the current directory in a grid.

eza --oneline --reverse --sort=size
    Displays a list of files with the largest at the top.

eza --long --header --inode --git
    Displays a table of files with a header, showing each file’s metadata, inode, and Git status.

eza --long --tree --level=3
    Displays a tree of files, three levels deep, as well as each file’s metadata.

META OPTIONS

--help
    Show list of command-line options.

-v, --version
    Show version of eza.

DISPLAY OPTIONS

-1, --oneline
    Display one entry per line.

--absolute=WHEN
    Display entries with their absolute path.

Valid settings are ‘on’, ‘follow’, and ‘off’. When used without a value, defaults to ‘on’.

‘on’: Show absolute paths for all entries. ‘follow’: Show absolute paths and resolve symbolic links to their targets. ‘off’: Show relative paths (default behavior).

-F, --classify=WHEN
    Display file kind indicators next to file names.

Valid settings are ‘always’, ‘automatic’ (or ‘auto’ for short), and ‘never’. When used without a value, defaults to ‘automatic’.

automatic or auto will display file kind indicators only when the standard output is connected to a real terminal. If eza is ran while in a tty, or the output of eza is either redirected to a file or piped into another program, file kind indicators will not be used. Setting this option to ‘always’ causes eza to always display file kind indicators, while ‘never’ disables the use of file kind indicators.

-G, --grid
    Display entries as a grid (default).

-l, --long
    Display extended file metadata as a table.

-R, --recurse
    Recurse into directories.

-T, --tree
    Recurse into directories as a tree.

--follow-symlinks
    Drill down into symbolic links that point to directories.

-X, --dereference
    Dereference symbolic links when displaying information.

-x, --across
    Sort the grid across, rather than downwards.

--color=WHEN, --colour=WHEN
    When to use terminal colours (using ANSI escape code to colorize the output).

Valid settings are ‘always’, ‘automatic’ (or ‘auto’ for short), and ‘never’. When used without a value, defaults to ‘automatic’.

The default behavior (‘automatic’ or ‘auto’) is to colorize the output only when the standard output is connected to a real terminal. If the output of eza is redirected to a file or piped into another program, terminal colors will not be used. Setting this option to ‘always’ causes eza to always output terminal color, while ‘never’ disables the use of terminal color.

Manually setting this option overrides NO_COLOR environment.

--color-scale, --colour-scale
    highlight levels of field distinctly. Use comma(,) separated list of all, age, size

--color-scale-mode=MODE, --colour-scale-mode=MODE
    Use gradient or fixed colors in --color-scale.

Valid options are fixed or gradient. When used without a value, defaults to gradient.

--icons=WHEN
    Display icons next to file names.

Valid settings are ‘always’, ‘automatic’ (‘auto’ for short), and ‘never’. When used without a value, defaults to ‘automatic’.

automatic or auto will display icons only when the standard output is connected to a real terminal. If eza is ran while in a tty, or the output of eza is either redirected to a file or piped into another program, icons will not be used. Setting this option to ‘always’ causes eza to always display icons, while ‘never’ disables the use of icons.

--no-quotes
    Don’t quote file names with spaces.

--hyperlink
    Display entries as hyperlinks

-w, --width=COLS
    Set screen width in columns.

FILTERING AND SORTING OPTIONS

-a, --all
    Show hidden and “dot” files. Use this twice to also show the ‘.’ and ‘..’ directories.

-A, --almost-all
    Equivalent to –all; included for compatibility with ls -A.

-d, --treat-dirs-as-files
    This flag, inherited from ls, changes how eza handles directory arguments.Instead of recursing into directories and listing their contents (the default behavior), it treats directories as regular files and lists information about the directory entry itself.This is useful when you want to see metadata about the directory (e.g., permissions, size, modification time) rather than its contents.For simply listing only directories and not files, consider using the --only-dirs (-D) option as an alternative.

-L, --level=DEPTH
    Limit the depth of recursion.

-r, --reverse
    Reverse the sort order.

-s, --sort=SORT_FIELD
    Which field to sort by.

Valid sort fields are ‘name’, ‘Name’, ‘extension’, ‘Extension’, ‘size’, ‘modified’, ‘changed’, ‘accessed’, ‘created’, ‘inode’, ‘type’, and ‘none’.

The modified sort field has the aliases ‘date’, ‘time’, and ‘newest’, and its reverse order has the aliases ‘age’ and ‘oldest’.

Sort fields starting with a capital letter will sort uppercase before lowercase: ‘A’ then ‘B’ then ‘a’ then ‘b’. Fields starting with a lowercase letter will mix them: ‘A’ then ‘a’ then ‘B’ then ‘b’.

-I, --ignore-glob=GLOBS
    Glob patterns, pipe-separated, of files to ignore.

--git-ignore [if eza was built with git support]
    Do not list files that are ignored by Git.

--group-directories-first
    List directories before other files.

--group-directories-last
    List directories after other files.

-D, --only-dirs
    List only directories, not files.

-f, --only-files
    List only files, not directories.

--show-symlinks
    Explicitly show symbolic links (when used with --only-files | --only-dirs)

--no-symlinks
    Do not show symbolic links

LONG VIEW OPTIONS

These options are available when running with --long (-l):

-b, --binary
    List file sizes with binary prefixes.

-B, --bytes
    List file sizes in bytes, without any prefixes.

--changed
    Use the changed timestamp field.

-g, --group
    List each file’s group.

--smart-group
    Only show group if it has a different name from owner

-h, --header
    Add a header row to each column.

-H, --links
    List each file’s number of hard links.

-i, --inode
    List each file’s inode number.

-m, --modified
    Use the modified timestamp field.

-M, --mounts
    Show mount details (Linux and Mac only)

-n, --numeric
    List numeric user and group IDs.

-O, --flags
    List file flags on Mac and BSD systems and file attributes on Windows systems. By default, Windows attributes are displayed in a long form. To display in attributes as single character set the environment variable EZA_WINDOWS_ATTRIBUTES=short. On BSD systems see chflags(1) for a list of file flags and their meanings.

-S, --blocksize
    List each file’s size of allocated file system blocks.

-t, --time=WORD
    Which timestamp field to list.Valid timestamp fields are ‘modified’, ‘changed’, ‘accessed’, and ‘created’.

--time-style=STYLE
    How to format timestamps.Valid timestamp styles are ‘default’, ‘iso’, ‘long-iso’, ‘full-iso’, ‘relative’, or a custom style ‘+<FORMAT>’ (e.g., ‘+%Y-%m-%d %H:%M’ => ‘2023-09-30 13:00’).

<FORMAT> should be a chrono format string. For details on the chrono format syntax, please read: https://docs.rs/chrono/latest/chrono/format/strftime/index.html .

Alternatively, <FORMAT> can be a two line string, the first line will be used for non-recent files and the second for recent files. E.g., if <FORMAT> is “%Y-%m-%d %H<newline>--%m-%d %H:%M”, non-recent files => “2022-12-30 13”, recent files => “--09-30 13:34”.

--total-size
    Show recursive directory size (unix only).

-u, --accessed
    Use the accessed timestamp field.

-U, --created
    Use the created timestamp field.

--no-permissions
    Suppress the permissions field.

-o, --octal-permissions
    List each file’s permissions in octal format.

--no-filesize
    Suppress the file size field.

--no-user
    Suppress the user field.

--no-time
    Suppress the time field.

--stdin
    When you wish to pipe directories to eza/read from stdin. Separate one per line or define custom separation char in EZA_STDIN_SEPARATOR env variable.

-@, --extended
    List each file’s extended attributes and sizes.

-Z, --context
    List each file’s security context.

--git  [if eza was built with git support]
    List each file’s Git status, if tracked. This adds a two-character column indicating the staged and unstaged statuses respectively. The status character can be ‘-’ for not modified, ‘M’ for a modified file, ‘N’ for a new file, ‘D’ for deleted, ‘R’ for renamed, ‘T’ for type-change, ‘I’ for ignored, and ‘U’ for conflicted. Directories will be shown to have the status of their contents, which is how ‘deleted’ is possible if a directory contains a file that has a certain status, it will be shown to have that status.

--git-repos [if eza was built with git support]
    List each directory’s Git status, if tracked. Symbols shown are |= clean, += dirty, and ~= for unknown.

--git-repos-no-status [if eza was built with git support]
    List if a directory is a Git repository, but not its status. All Git repository directories will be shown as (themed) - without status indicated.

--no-git
    Don’t show Git status (always overrides --git, --git-repos, --git-repos-no-status)

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES

If an environment variable prefixed with EZA_ is not set, for backward compatibility, it will default to its counterpart starting with EXA_.

eza responds to the following environment variables:

  COLUMNS

Overrides the width of the terminal, in characters, however, -w takes precedence.

For example, ‘COLUMNS=80 eza’ will show a grid view with a maximum width of 80 characters.

This option won’t do anything when eza’s output doesn’t wrap, such as when using the --long view.

  EZA_STRICT

Enables strict mode, which will make eza error when two command-line options are incompatible.

Usually, options can override each other going right-to-left on the command line, so that eza can be given aliases: creating an alias ‘eza=eza --sort=ext’ then running ‘eza --sort=size’ with that alias will run ‘eza --sort=ext --sort=size’, and the sorting specified by the user will override the sorting specified by the alias.

In strict mode, the two options will not co-operate, and eza will error.

This option is intended for use with automated scripts and other situations where you want to be certain you’re typing in the right command.

  EZA_GRID_ROWS

Limits the grid-details view (‘eza --grid --long’) so it’s only activated when at least the given number of rows of output would be generated.

With widescreen displays, it’s possible for the grid to look very wide and sparse, on just one or two lines with none of the columns lining up. By specifying a minimum number of rows, you can only use the view if it’s going to be worth using.

  EZA_ICON_SPACING

Specifies the number of spaces to print between an icon (see the ‘--icons’ option) and its file name.

Different terminals display icons differently, as they usually take up more than one character width on screen, so there’s no “standard” number of spaces that eza can use to separate an icon from text. One space may place the icon too close to the text, and two spaces may place it too far away. So the choice is left up to the user to configure depending on their terminal emulator.

  NO_COLOR

Disables colours in the output (regardless of its value). Can be overridden by --color option.

See https://no-color.org/ for details.

  LS_COLORS, EZA_COLORS

Specifies the colour scheme used to highlight files based on their name and kind, as well as highlighting metadata and parts of the UI.

For more information on the format of these environment variables, see the eza_colors.5.md (eza_colors.5.md) manual page.

  EZA_OVERRIDE_GIT

Overrides any --git or --git-repos argument

  EZA_MIN_LUMINANCE

Specifies the minimum luminance to use when color-scale is active. It’s value can be between -100 to 100.

  EZA_ICONS_AUTO

If set, automates the same behavior as using --icons or --icons=auto. Useful for if you always want to have icons enabled.

Any explicit use of the --icons=WHEN flag overrides this behavior.

  EZA_STDIN_SEPARATOR

Specifies the separator to use when file names are piped from stdin. Defaults to newline.

  EZA_CONFIG_DIR

Specifies the directory where eza will look for its configuration and theme files. Defaults to $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/eza or $HOME/.config/eza if XDG_CONFIG_HOME is not set.

EXIT STATUSES

0   If everything goes OK.

1   If there was an I/O error during operation.

3   If there was a problem with the command-line arguments.

13  If permission is denied to access a path.

AUTHOR

eza is maintained by Christina Sørensen and many other contributors.

Source code: https://github.com/eza-community/eza
Contributors: https://github.com/eza-community/eza/graphs/contributors

Our infinite thanks to Benjamin ‘ogham’ Sago and all the other contributors of exa, from which eza was forked.

SEE ALSO

•   eza_colors(5) (eza_colors.5.md)

•   eza_colors-explanation(5) (eza_colors-explanation.5.md)