How to list files and directories with directories first

Question

I have two questions. First, which command lists files and directories, but lists directories first?

Second question: I want to copy a list of files into a single directory, but make the target directory the first filename in the command.

Answer 1

Got GNU?

The gnu version of ls has --group-directories-first. And cp has -t.

No GNU?

On systems that don't have gnu's ls, your best bet is two successive calls to find with -maxdepth n/-mindepth n and -type t with the appropriate options.

find . -maxdepth 1 -mindepth 1 -type d
find . -maxdepth 1 -mindepth 1 \! -type d

For copying files, with the target first, you would have to write a script that saves the first argument, then uses shift, and appends the argument to the end.

#!/bin/sh
target="$1"
shift
cp -r -- "$@" "$target"

Watch Out!

If you were planning on using these together - that is, collecting the list from find or ls (possibly by using xargs) and passing it to cp (or a cp wrapper), you should be aware of what dangers lie in parsing lists of files (basically, filenames can contain characters like newlines that can mess up your script). Specifically, look into find's -exec and -print0 options and xargs's -0 option.

An alternative tool for efficiently copying directory trees.

You might want to look into using rsync instead; it has lots of functionality that might make your job easier.

Answer 2

Listing directories first for a non-GNU ls:

ls -l | sort

Note, this will list all the bunch of other weird stuff like symlinks, sockets and pipes as well (appropriately grouped, of course), but considering that stuff is quite rare that shouldn't be a problem. Otherwise the filter would be ls -l | grep '^(-|d)' | sort