Feature Request - Provide more UNIX-like view of files/directories

TLDR; I’m unhappy with the view for gci on my Mac so I did something about it

Summary of the new feature/enhancement

I’ve been thinking that the Get-ChildItem experience on Linux/Mac is not providing as much information as I would like. We don’t report user, group or a real mode, and size for directories is not reported.

Proposed technical implementation details (optional)

Consider the difference between ls -ld /opt and Get-Item /opt (this is the same for files, but I am attempting to avoid a large amount of output).

PS> /bin/ls -ld /opt
drwxr-xr-x  3 root  wheel  96 Mar 16 14:14 /opt

PS> gi /opt


    Directory: /

Mode                 LastWriteTime         Length Name
----                 -------------         ------ ----
d-r--           3/16/2019  2:14 PM                opt

There’s a useful mode description, as well as owner/group info. The LastWriteTime is a bit tidier (imo) and then there’s a length reported for a directory. All that extra info is down to the stat API which provides all this information. Unfortunately, the stat API is way different between platforms; the struct property layout is different, some of the properties are different types (inode can be an int or a long), etc), so it’s a bit of a mess and you can’t just simply wrap stat in c# and be portable.

I spent a little time in constructing a common stat structure which could smooth out the underlying differences between platforms and present useful data which could be used in the filesystem provider and provide a better (to me, anyway) experience.

Here’s what I’ve got so far:

PS> gi /opt | ft -view childrenWithUnixStat


    Directory: /

UnixMode   User       Group       LastWriteTime           Size Name
--------   ----       -----       -------------           ---- ----
drwxr-xr-x root       wheel        Mar 16 02:14             96 opt

It handles the usual pipes, char/block devices

PS> ls /dev/zero


    Directory: /dev

Mode                 LastWriteTime         Length Name
----                 -------------         ------ ----
-----           8/14/2019  5:31 PM              0 zero

PS> ls /dev/zero | ft -view childrenWithUnixStat


    Directory: /dev

UnixMode   User       Group       LastWriteTime           Size Name
--------   ----       -----       -------------           ---- ----
crw-rw-rw- root       wheel        Aug 14 05:31              0 zero

My implementation leads to some cool side effects:

PS> gci /dev | group group

Count Name                      Group
----- ----                      -----
    1 _windowserver             {/dev/xcpm}
   43 operator                  {/dev/disk0, /dev/disk0s1, /dev/disk0s2, /dev/disk1…}
    1 staff                     {/dev/console}
   12 tty                       {/dev/ptmx, /dev/ttys000, /dev/ttys001, /dev/ttys002…}
  301 wheel                     {/dev/fd, /dev/afsc_type5, /dev/auditpipe, /dev/auditsessions…}

PS> gci /dev | group unixmode

Count Name                      Group
----- ----                      -----
   17 brw-r-----                {/dev/disk0, /dev/disk0s1, /dev/disk0s2, /dev/disk1…}
    1 cr--r--r--                {/dev/io8logmt}
   17 crw-------                {/dev/afsc_type5, /dev/auditpipe, /dev/autofs, /dev/autofs_control…}
   11 crw--w----                {/dev/ttys000, /dev/ttys001, /dev/ttys002, /dev/ttys003…}
   17 crw-r-----                {/dev/rdisk0, /dev/rdisk0s1, /dev/rdisk0s2, /dev/rdisk1…}
    2 crw-r--r--                {/dev/auditsessions, /dev/fsevents}
    1 crw-rw----                {/dev/xcpm}
  288 crw-rw-rw-                {/dev/autofs_homedirmounter, /dev/autofs_notrigger, /dev/autofs_nowait, /dev/cu.Bluetooth-Incoming-Port…}
    1 dr-xr-xr-x                {/dev/fd}
    3 lr-xr-xr-x                {/dev/stderr, /dev/stdin, /dev/stdout}

PS> gci / | group { $_.UnixStat.HardLinkCount}

Count Name                      Group
----- ----                      -----
    1 3                         {/opt}
    1 5                         {/System}
    1 6                         {/Users}
    1 65                        {/Library}
    1 84                        {/Applications}

I have done the barest of performance analysis, but I’m not seeing much impact.

Implementation wise, I did this in PowerShell-Native where I smoothed out stat to be x-plat and then extended the native calls in CorePsPlatform, and called them from ProviderBase, extended types in Types_Ps1Xml and created a new format in FileSystem_format_ps1xml.

My question to you all: Do you think this has legs? Should I spend more time on it? I’m already personally finding it useful, but not sure whether anyone really cares.

[rkeithhill]

I very much like the idea of surfacing platform-specific and useful information from gci. On Linux, it is currently of limited use. I find I’m falling back to ls a lot for something that seems like it should be supported directly by PS.

[JoseRa-KnowIT]

I very much like this proposal, even me as a windows guy I tend to use the native ls command on wsl or linux, because GCI well… the point was already said, so I can´t even imagine the feeling of a purist brave-heart linux guy trying to give a chance to pwsh.

But I think as @TobiasPSP wisely exposed, all commands should be standard and consistent on every platform, so there must be a kind of in-between solution that benefit users of all platforms.