Making ls -ltr Work with eza

📅 2025-11-01 👤 colosieve

Problem

Muscle memory uses ls -ltr but eza doesn’t support -t -r flags directly.

❯ ls -ltr
eza: Option --time (-t) has no "r" setting

Root Cause

eza uses --sort oldest/newest instead of -t -r
oh-my-zsh sets alias ls='ls -G' in theme-and-appearance.zsh
Alias overrides function definitions unless explicitly removed

Solution

Shell function that translates flags and removes oh-my-zsh alias.

# Remove oh-my-zsh's ls alias first
unalias ls 2>/dev/null

function ls() {
  local args=()
  local has_t=false
  local has_r=false

  # Parse user's flags
  for arg in "$@"; do
    if [[ "$arg" == -* ]] && [[ "$arg" != --* ]]; then
      [[ "$arg" == *t* ]] && has_t=true
      [[ "$arg" == *r* ]] && has_r=true
      # Remove t and r, keep other flags like 'a'
      local cleaned=$(echo "$arg" | sed 's/[tr]//g')
      [[ "$cleaned" != "-" ]] && args+=("$cleaned")
    else
      args+=("$arg")
    fi
  done

  # Build base args
  if $has_t; then
    # For time sorting: use all defaults
    args=(-lh --group-directories-first --icons=auto "${args[@]}")
    if $has_r; then
      args+=(--sort oldest)
    else
      args+=(--sort newest)
    fi
  else
    # For normal listing: use all defaults
    args=(-lh --group-directories-first --icons=auto "${args[@]}")
  fi

  eza "${args[@]}"
}

Key Points

unalias ls 2>/dev/null must run before function definition
Translates -ltr → -lh --group-directories-first --icons=auto --sort oldest
Translates -lt → -lh --group-directories-first --icons=auto --sort newest
Preserves other flags like -a (becomes -ltra)