Sl: a mirror version of ls

Probably an unpopular opinion, but I find aliases and extensive dotfiles counterproductive.<p>It&#x27;s better to learn and remember the exact commands. If you find yourself typing the same long command over and over again, the task should probably be automated or scripted as part of a separate pipeline.<p>Assuming you are successful with aliasing and don&#x27;t accidentally do something unexpected and catastrophic to your system, the moment you login to another system you will be lost and unable to remember any of the original and core commands.

I always liked the story about the guy who aliased emacs to be &#x27;em&#x27;. Until one day he accidentally typed an &#x27;r&#x27; instead of an &#x27;e&#x27;. It turns out aliases can cost a lot more time than they can save!

I like to add &quot;install <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;mtoyoda&#x2F;sl&quot;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;mtoyoda&#x2F;sl&quot;</a> to my companies &quot;Getting started&quot; documentation to prank new hires. Great fun!

Or you just<p><pre><code> alias sl=ls </code></pre> and have productivity reach unseen levels!

I once installed sl on a server. Completely forgot I put it there. It laid there dormant for MONTHS without anyone tripping over it. Then....it happened.<p>&quot;What the...why is my screen blac--is that a train-AW DAMMIT&quot;.<p>That person was me. The guy who installed the damn thing.<p>The progression from confusion, to curiosity, to realization that I had in fact...just played myself was kind of amusing in the moment.

See also, gti: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;r-wos.org&#x2F;hacks&#x2F;gti" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;r-wos.org&#x2F;hacks&#x2F;gti</a>

No no no. There is only one &#x27;sl&#x27;.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;asciinema.org&#x2F;a&#x2F;172723" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;asciinema.org&#x2F;a&#x2F;172723</a>

Interesting.<p>Faced with the choice of <i>punishing</i> myself for making a mistake vs. <i>adapting my environment</i> to accommodate me, I&#x27;ll always choose the latter.<p>(Plus, since you use `ls` so frequently, just make `l` an alias of it, especially if you have difficulty typing &quot;ls&quot;! Using a computer doesn&#x27;t have to be some weird, punishing, bondage and discipline experience.)

Not to be confounded with the other project of the same name (and with the same purpose) <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;mtoyoda&#x2F;sl" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;mtoyoda&#x2F;sl</a>

a beautiful web page, and its only CSS is this:<p><pre><code> body { max-width: 50em; margin: auto; padding: 1em; line-height: 1.5em; } pre { overflow-x: auto; }</code></pre>

Maybe i&#x27;m just weird but I can&#x27;t recall ever making this typo, I find myself making letter-swap typos of words&#x2F;commands with letters on the same hand often enough but that&#x27;s not quite so easy with ls.

This code is incorrect: it has a a race condition that can cause it to use the wrong maximum width in its listing.

I don&#x27;t want to sound high and mighty or anything, but I&#x27;ve never mistyped &#x27;ls&#x27;. I occasionally mistype other short binaries&#x2F;commands, but typically anything more than ~4 characters has me hitting tab, and that usually completes uniquely and (obviously) correctly.

This should go the whole hog: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ubuntuforums.org&#x2F;archive&#x2F;index.php&#x2F;t-2078323.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ubuntuforums.org&#x2F;archive&#x2F;index.php&#x2F;t-2078323.html</a>

For some reason I don&#x27;t get ls wrong (right handed so maybe I reliably hit the l first) but I&#x27;ve had the following in my .alias for years<p><pre><code> # some common typos alias grpe grep alias gpre grep alias mroe more alias mreo more alias rmeo more</code></pre>

This didn&#x27;t work on Mac OS due to &quot;wc -L&quot; so I whipped up a python version.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gist.github.com&#x2F;richardkiss&#x2F;4fba0c6bd27eb39a9eb56074dd0f2ba4" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gist.github.com&#x2F;richardkiss&#x2F;4fba0c6bd27eb39a9eb56074...</a>

Long ago there was a ms dos. program called “rude dos” that if installed would replace the all commands with versions that randomly and rarely would refuse to work with various rude messages. I always ran it before letting my little brother use my computer :).

&gt; Consider this code GPLv3 licensed.<p>is this actually valid? Does it mean the code _is_ GPLv3 licensed or not?

The `wc -L` call fails on my Mac, but if I substitute gwc (as I have GNU coreutils available with a &quot;g&quot; prefix), it works.

This didn&#x27;t work on Mac OS due to &quot;wc -L&quot; so I whipped up a python version.

not quite there but<p>alias sl=&#x27;&#x2F;bin&#x2F;ls -l | tac | rev | column -t&#x27;

In similar vein: express your inner rage while terminating offending processes.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;robotlolita&#x2F;fuck-you" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;robotlolita&#x2F;fuck-you</a>

I always alias &quot;ls&quot; to &quot;l&quot;

Hi, author here. Feel free to ask questions!