ncls(1)

💖 ncls(1) — the manual, but make it cute 💖

okay bestie so you know how ls(1) is out here being all iconic and useful but also just... text? yeah. ncls said "not on my watch" and started rendering your actual images and videos right there in the terminal. ✨ Notcurses-powered, multimedia-enabled, listing paths like the main character it is. 🎀

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🌸 NAME 🌸

ncls — list paths, but with multimedia rendering 🦋

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🌈 SYNOPSIS 🌈

ncls [-h|--help] [-V|--version] [-d] [-l] [-L] [-R] [-a|--align type]
[-b|--blitter blitter] [-s|--scale scale] [ paths ]

look at all those little flags, they're giving ✨options✨

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💅 DESCRIPTION 💅

so basically, ncls uses a multimedia-enabled Notcurses to list paths — literally the same energy as the ls(1) command, except it actually renders images and videos straight into your terminal. no cap. your file list is now a whole vibe check. 🖼️✨

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🎀 OPTIONS 🎀

one bullet per flag, as promised, no skipping, we don't do that here:

• -d — list the directories themselves, not what's inside them. peek at the folder, not its contents. 🙈
• -l — use a long listing format. more columns, more detail, more to obsess over. 👑
• -L — dereference symbolic links. follow that symlink to its source, bestie. 🦋
• -R — list subdirectories recursively. down the rabbit hole we go, fr fr. 🕳️
• -V, --version — print version information and exit with success. iconic behavior only. 💚
• -h, --help — print help information and exit with success. self-care, honestly. 🫶
• -a, --align type — align images on left, center, or right. your aesthetic, your call. 💅
• -b, --blitter blitter — the blitter, and it's one of ascii, half, quad, sex, braille, or pixel. the default is pixel. ⚠️ if the chosen blitter is unavailable, ncls will degrade (see notcurses_visual(3)) — that's a real thing, not me being dramatic. 😭
• -s, --scale scalemode — scaling mode, one of none, hires, scale, scalehi, or stretch. pick your fighter. 🔥
• paths — run on the specified paths. if none are supplied, it just runs on the current directory. ✨

okay so important one: if no scaling is specified, hires will be used with the pixel blitter, and scalehi will be used otherwise. remember that. write it down. put it on your mirror. 🪞

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🫶 NOTES 🫶

optimal display requires a terminal that's advertising the rgb terminfo(5) capability — or, alternatively, that the environment variable COLORTERM is defined to 24bit (and that the terminal actually honors that variable, obviously). 💁‍♀️

oh and also: you want a fixed-width font with good coverage of the Unicode Block Drawing Characters. no skipping this one, the characters will literally not draw right. 💀

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🧚 SEE ALSO 🧚

• notcurses(3)
• notcurses_visual(3)
• terminfo(5)
• unicode(7)

go read them, iykyk 📚

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👑 AUTHORS 👑

nick black — nickblack@linux.com

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and that's the whole page, bestie! 🎉 this was version v3.0.17 of ncls(1), and yeah that's the same ncls(1) we've been talking about the entire time. slay, go render some pictures in your terminal. 💖🌈🌸