As computers have rapidly evolved in horsepower and colorized displays have become the norm, many command line tools have seen rewrites or reimplementations, often times in Rust. Many people1â4 have found it useful to replace the classic command with a modern replacement for speed, ease-of-use, colorization, or added features:
| Tool | Replacement for | Drop in Replacement |
|---|---|---|
| bat | cat | Yes |
| bottom | top | No |
| choose | cut | No |
| delta or diff-so-fancy | diff | Yes |
| dog | dig | No |
| duf | du | No |
| dust | du | No |
| exa | ls | No |
| fd | find | No |
| lsd | ls | Yes |
| plocate | locate | Yes |
| procs | ps | No |
| ripgrep | ag or grep | No |
| rmesg | dmesg | No |
| sad | sed | No |
| sd | tr or sed | No |
1. Evans, J. A list of new(ish) command line tools. https://jvns.ca/blog/2022/04/12/a-list-of-new-ishâcommand-line-tools/ (22AD).
2. Neander, J. Rewritten in Rust: Modern Alternatives of Command-Line Tools. https://zaiste.net/posts/shell-commands-rust/ (2020).
3. An Illustrated Guide to Some Useful Command Line Tools - WezM.net by Wesley Moore. https://www.wezm.net/technical/2019/10/useful-command-line-tools/ (2019).
4. Triandafilov, I. Awesome Command-Line Tools. https://www.vimfromscratch.com/articles/awesome-command-line-tools (2019).