Nice tips!! bat(1) is fantastic, wow. exa(1) seems neat, but the inconsiderate--and likely deliberate--lack of compatibility with ls(1) flags means I will never use it any time soon... I have decades' worth of aliases, scripts, and reflexive muscle-memory using GNU ls, so it's not even close to being worth the pain of changing.
It's not like your going to delete `ls` - you can have both?
I have a `ll` alias which is use for 80% of my "what's in this folder" ls use - I just changed this alias (and a couple of others) to use exa. I left ls alone: I didn't alias ls to exa.
It's been a good QoL improvement for me, at ~zero cost.
You're right. I can do that. I didn't want to risk starting a flame war by admitting I have twelve main `ls' aliases (twelve unique argv incantations), and that I keep them portable across platforms. LOL. I started doing this about 20 yrs ago. Many times, I will inject them with a zsh or keyboard macro, since I type on a custom keymap on a programmable keyboard. So I didn't want yet another conditional branch in my configuration management. ;) Not sure whether "special" or just demented...
