vls

A minimal, colorized replacement for ls.

Features

• Colorizes output based on file type with LS_COLORS customization
• Optional OSC 8 hyperlinks with --hyperlink=WHEN
• Supports long listings and sorting with --sort=WORD (time, size, atime, ctime, extension, version, none)
• Recursive listing and directory-first ordering
• Indicator characters configurable with --indicator-style=STYLE (none, slash, file-type, classify)
• Pattern ignoring and indicator characters ("/", "*", "@"); use --file-type for directory markers only
• Hide entries matching glob patterns with --hide=PATTERN
• Optional dereferencing of command line symlinks (-H)
• Optional display of SELinux contexts (-Z, Linux only, requires libselinux)
• Quoting styles with --quoting-style=STYLE (literal, c, escape), with -Q and -b as shortcuts
• Print names literally with -N/--literal, overriding quoting and escaping options
• Hide control characters with -q/--hide-control-chars
• Display control characters literally with --show-control-chars
• Human readable sizes (-h uses powers of 1024, --si uses powers of 1000), column layout (-C/-x) and comma-separated output (-m)
• Override the block size used for -s with --block-size=SIZE where SIZE is a number of bytes with no unit suffix; use -k for 1 KiB blocks
• Set output width with -w COLS and tab size with -T COLS
• Customizable timestamp format via --time-style=FMT and --full-time
• Select which timestamp to show with --time=WORD (mod, access, use, status)
• Cross‑platform Makefile for Linux, macOS and NetBSD

For a complete list of options see vlsdoc.md or the manual page at man/vls.1.

Building

Run make to compile. Override CFLAGS or PREFIX as needed. SELinux support requires the libselinux development package to be installed.

Installation

Install with sudo make install. Use PREFIX to choose a different destination.

Testing

Run make test to compile vls and execute a small regression suite. The tests create a temporary directory under build/ and exercise options such as -A, -d, -C, -m and both --color=always and --color=never. Output and the exit status for each invocation are saved in build/ for inspection. The script verifies that every command succeeds and prints expected data. A message is printed once all tests pass.

License

Distributed under the BSD 2-Clause "Simplified" License. See LICENSE for details.