lc-go

README

lc-go

lc-go is an enhanced Go port of gdm85/lc. lc is a command similar to ls that was originally included with the Coherent Unix clone. lc lists files grouped by category: directory, file, symlink, etc. Its output consists of columns after Bill Joy's ls in 1BSD. Unlike ls, lc always lists dot files.

Sample output

This is the output of running lc-go in a clone of this repository:

$ go build
$ ln -s lc-go lc
$ ./lc -F
Directories:
    .git/        .github/     doc/

Files:
    .gitignore   LICENSE.md   Makefile     README.md    go.mod
    go.sum       lc-go*       main.go      main_test.go

Symlinks:
    lc@

Installation

First, install Go 1.22 or later. Once it is installed, run the following:

go install dbohdan.com/lc-go@latest

# or

git clone https://github.com/dbohdan/lc-go
cd lc-go
make install

You may wish to symlink ~/go/bin/lc-go to ~/go/bin/lc for a shorter command. make install does this automatically. To avoid name conflict with the original C version of lc, you can rename it to, for example, lco.

Compatibility

lc-go supports FreeBSD, Linux, macOS, NetBSD, and OpenBSD. It is automatically tested on those systems. lc-go builds but doesn't work on Windows.

Documentation

Manual page

The file doc/lc-go.1 contains an update of the original manual page, It has been converted to use modern -man macros. You will also find it in Markdown in doc/lc-go.1.md. On a modern Linux or BSD system, it may be viewed with man ./doc/lc-go.1. The original, unaltered manual page source is in doc/lc.orig.troff.

Introduction

A scanned and OCRed page introducing lc in an early chapter of the Coherent user manual may be viewed in doc/intro.md. The page is also preserved as an image.

Differences from the C version

lc-go:

• Detects terminal width.
• Adds a mode for filenames longer than the available terminal width. It prints only one column when they are present. (This is different from the flag -1, which disables columns.)
• Adds optional color. Color is enabled by default. It can be disabled using the environment variable NO_COLOR.
• Adds a new flag -F. -F enables file type indicators after the filename:
  • / for directories;
  • * for executable files;
  • @ for symlinks;
  • = for sockets;
  • | for pipes (FIFOs).
• Does not dereference symlinks when detecting their type (a bugfix).

License

Released under the original BSD-3-Clause license.