An improved ls command that can exclude files matching given globs and shows how many of each file were excluded.

ls_with_ignore_and_print

###########
## Notes ##
###########
## This shows you how to configure your ls command to not show certain files, 
## and tell you how many of those files were omitted. This declutters your ls output.
## To use this, add it to whatever .{profile, alias, rc} file you put your aliases in.

## The ls and find functions here are the GNU variants: the flags needed are not in 
## the BSD variant, which is the OSX default. 
## So on OSX, you'll need to install GNU ls and GNU find (see http://goo.gl/bDO0ga),
## and if you don't use the ``default-names` option in brew either change `ls` and 
## `find` to `gls` and `gfind` respectively, or do
##     alias ls='gls'; alias find='gfind'

######################
## Begin definition ##
######################

## Globs here will be excluded from the output of ls
omit_globs=('*.pyc' 'xxx')

## Build the ignore args for the ls command
ignore_args=''
for omit_glob in ${omit_globs}; do
    ignore_args="$ignore_args --ignore=\"${omit_glob}\""
done

## The main function
function lshide () {
    ## Set lsarg to the current directory if there were no arguments to ls; 
    ## otherwise set it to the arguments.
    ## Allows ls with no arguments to work as expected.
    lsarg=${@:-.}
    ## Build the ls command and run it, so that ignore_args gets properly
    ## parsed as the flags. This causes the ls output.
    lscmd="ls $lsarg ${ignore_args}"
    eval $lscmd
    ## Exit if ls failed
    if [ $? -ne 0 ] ; then return; fi
    ## Count the number of files to omit
    for omit_glob in ${omit_globs}; do
        ## Need to use the eval string again because lsarg could be a glob,
        ## and it's now a string because we used the noglob setting
        find_cmd="find ${lsarg} -maxdepth 1 -iname \"${omit_glob}\""
        ## Counts the number of excluded files; the sed command formats the
        ## output of wc by stripping leading spaces and tabs
        omit_count=$(eval $find_cmd | wc -l | sed -e 's/^[ \t]*//')
        if [ $omit_count -gt 0 ] ; then
            echo "Omitted ${omit_count} ${omit_glob} files"
        fi
    done
}
## Need noglob because we want to pass globs to the function without the shell
## expanding them first
alias ls="noglob lshide"  ## Or whatever alias you want

####################
## Example output ##
####################
## $ ls
## < ls output >
## Omitted 9 .pyc files
## Omitted 1 xxx files

## The "omitted" line is not printed for any globs that weren't excluded 
## (so if there were no .pyc files, that line wouldn't print)