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up vote 3 down vote favorite

I'd like to show the contents of a folder without first changing into it. for example: 

---- Documents
        |
        |
        L_ Essays

If I'm in Documents, how can I show the contents of Essays with a single command?

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2 Answers

up vote 4 down vote accepted 
ls Essays/

works from within Documents. A tiny snippet of FreeBSD's ls man page:

 ls [ .... ] [file ...]

DESCRIPTION For each operand that names a file of a type other than directory, ls displays its name as well as any requested, associated information. For each operand that names a file of type directory, ls displays the names of files contained within that directory, as well as any requested, associated information.

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Just add a slash? Really? – Moshe Feb 9 '12 at 15:44
1  
just ls directory, the slash is not mandatory even, as, in your case, the file Essays is of type directory. – sr_ Feb 9 '12 at 15:46
Oh, I see, so the name of the target directory is what does it. – Moshe Feb 9 '12 at 15:48
1  
@sr_: the slash is required if the directory is a symbolic (soft) link. – Hai Vu Feb 10 '12 at 5:59
@HaiVu: Thank you, I wasn't aware of this :) – sr_ Feb 10 '12 at 8:21
up vote 1 down vote

If you want to include the directory name in the listing, too:

find Essays/ -maxdepth 1
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