sl: The other sl

I spent my obligatory 30 minutes this morning trying to figure out what had broken to spew garbage all over my screen in the place of Firefox. Then I realized it was Firefox, in some new and mutated flavor.

Once the hate had flowed through me, I sat down and started looking for options, and so I type to you now from Pale Moon, and so far things are as good, if not better.

All that aside, it’s time to look at the other sl, the one kwlblt mentioned and nobody seems to know about. Or at least I sure didn’t know about, until last week.

I really, really like this. Rather than just rely on the strict ls rundown, sl categorizes files, shows you how big they are if they’re unusually large, how old they are if that is also unusual, if links are broken, if files are executable, etc., etc.

sl is also smart enough to lump directories according to their contents. So for example, my wallpaper directory shows up under the “images” heading, and not just as a folder.

It’s a much more practical, human-ish approach to directory contents. And it has color! 😀

I don’t see this as a replacement to ls, so much as an amplification. There’s information that is more handy from ls, and there is some that is more intuitive in sl. I hope to use both.

And all this time, it was hiding behind that ascii locomotive. Tsk, tsk. … 🙂