The ls command lists the contents of a directory.
27
votes
5answers
2k views
The result of ls * , ls ** and ls ***
I know using the command ls will list all the directories. But what does the ls * command do ? I used it and it just lists the directories. Is the star in front of ls means how deep it can list the ...
23
votes
1answer
1k views
Why does “ls *” take so much longer than “ls”?
I have a couple of files in a directory:
$ ls | wc -l
9376
Can anybody explain why there is such a huge time difference in using ls * and ls?
$ time ls > /dev/null
real 0m0.118s
user ...
22
votes
5answers
2k views
Is there any option with 'ls' command that I see only the directories?
Sometimes, I need to check only the directories not files. Is there any option with the command ls? Or is there any utility for doing that?
EDIT: I'm using Mac OS X, and ls -d gives me . even though ...
21
votes
7answers
2k views
why does ls -d also list files, and where is it documented?
when specifying ls --directory a* it should list only directories starting with a*
BUT it lists files AND directories starting with a
Questions:
where might I find some documentation on this, ...
19
votes
3answers
989 views
What does size of a directory mean in output of 'ls -l' command?
What does size of a directory mean in output of ls -l command?
18
votes
6answers
3k views
what does the @ mean in ls -l?
I am using Mac OSX. When I type ls -l I see something like
drwxr-xr-x@ 12 xonic staff 408 22 Jun 19:00 .
drwxr-xr-x 9 xonic staff 306 22 Jun 19:42 ..
-rwxrwxrwx@ 1 xonic staff 6148 25 ...
15
votes
2answers
3k views
Output from ls has newlines but displays on a single line. Why?
I think I may be overlooking a relatively fundamental point regarding shell. Output from the ls command by default separates output with newlines, but the shell displays the output on a single line.
...
14
votes
9answers
2k views
Linux - command to list files (except ls)
Imagine you were working on a system
and someone accidentally deleted the
ls command (/bin/ls). How could
you get a list of the files in the
current directory? Try it.
I tried many ...
13
votes
2answers
8k views
How do I do a ls and then sort the results by date created?
In what order are the dated ordered by? Certainly not alphanumeric order.
ls -lt sorts by modification time. But I need creation time.
13
votes
2answers
2k views
ls command: what does the first line mean?
I haven't been able to find this through internet, when I do ls -l I get this:
calico@A000505:~/Documentos$ ls -l
total 2020
-rwxr-xr-x 1 calico calico 8559 2010-11-16 11:12 a.out
-rwxrw-rw- 1 smt ...
13
votes
3answers
325 views
When does `ls -s` print “0”
Of course, the standard way of testing if a file is empty is with test -s FILE, but one of our clients have received a script containing tests like this:
RETVAL=`ls -s ./log/cr_trig.log | awk '{print ...
12
votes
5answers
3k views
How to match case insensitive patterns with ls?
I would like to list all files matching a certain pattern while ignoring the case.
For example, I run the following commands:
ls *abc*
I need to see all the file that have "abc" as a part of the ...
12
votes
1answer
2k views
ls taking long time in small directory
Running Ubuntu, I open a terminal and do
sudo bash
cd /
ls | head -n 1000
And predictably about 20 directories are returned.
However, if I do an ls, and don't pipe it into anything, the ls just ...
11
votes
2answers
544 views
“ls -lh” reports total size less than sum of individual sizes
Under what circumstances would ls -lh show a total that is less than the sum of the individual files? For example:
$ ls -lh /var/lib/nova/instances/_base
total 100G
-rw-rw-r-- 1 nova nova ...
11
votes
2answers
279 views
What is the number between file permission and owner in ls -l command output?
The output of ls -l command yields the following result:
What is the number field between file permission and owner? i.e. what are those 1, 1, 1, and 2? I checked the --help but that doesn't ...
10
votes
2answers
390 views
Highlight the three last updated files in ls output
Is there any way to overload or wrap the ls command so that it will highlight / underline / otherwise make obvious the last three modified files?
I know that I can simply ls -rtl to order by reverse ...
10
votes
5answers
789 views
How to list all files in the size order
I would like to list all files in the order of big to small in size and the files could be present anywhere in a certain folder.
10
votes
5answers
2k views
case-insensitive search of duplicate file-names
I there a way to find all files in a directory with duplicate filenames, regardless of the casing (upper-case and/or lower-case)?
9
votes
3answers
4k views
What is the Linux equivalent of DOS “dir /s /b filename”?
List all files/dirs in or below the current directory that match 'filename'.
9
votes
1answer
28k views
How to get only files created after a date with ls?
With ls command, does it possible to show only file created after a date, hour...
I'm asking it because I have a directory with thousand of files.
I want files created since yesterday.
I use ls ...
9
votes
2answers
1k views
Why does ls sorting ignore non-alphanumeric characters?
When sorting file names, ls ignores characters like -,_. I expected it to use those characters in sorting as well.
An example:
touch a1 a2 a-1 a-2 a_1 a_2 a.1 a.2 a,1 a,2
Now display these files ...
8
votes
5answers
2k views
What is the difference between ls and l?
I accidentally typed l instead of ls today and found that the command still printed a list of the files in my current directory. Trying l --help brings up the help file for ls suggesting that l is ...
8
votes
6answers
2k views
How do I list every file in a directory except those with specified extensions?
Suppose that I have a folder containing .txt, .pdf, and other files. I would like to list the "other" files (i.e., files not having the extensions .txt or .pdf). Do you have any advice on how to do ...
8
votes
3answers
5k views
Find the owner of a directory or file, but only return that and nothing else
I am looking for a command that will return the owner of a directory and only that--such as a regex parsing the ls -lat command or something similar? I want to use the result in another script.
8
votes
3answers
6k views
Linux ls to show only filename date and size
How can I use ls in linux to get a listing of filenames date and size only. I don't need to see the other info such as owner or permission. Is this possible?
8
votes
4answers
11k views
How to list files without directories, and filter by name (ls options)
I have a directory called uploads. It contains a bunch of files, plus a few subdirectories which in turn contain files.
Is there a way I can (in one step) do the following:
List ONLY the files in ...
8
votes
6answers
2k views
What does the “number” in the owner field of files signify in linux?
I copied many files to my new linux host. I see that all files have the owner and group both set to 515. What does that mean?
8
votes
2answers
359 views
What is the point of ls -f (or, why is this hanging?)
I've got a directory with about 100,000 files in it. ls -f hangs for over a minute. I ran strace, and immediately started seeing getdents, so ls is clearly reading the directory. I also see a lot ...
8
votes
3answers
1k views
How can I use ms-dos style wildcards with ls and mv?
I have the misfortune of coming from a MS-DOS background - but at least it makes me appreciate how much more powerful Linux is. I've been working on getting my Linux-Fu up to par, but there are a ...
7
votes
6answers
2k views
List files sorted numerically
I have a bunch of files from log1 to log164.
I'm trying to LIST the directory (sorted) in a UNIX terminal but the sort functions are only providing the format like this:
home:logs Home$ ls -1 | sort
...
7
votes
6answers
4k views
What's the best way to count the number of files in a directory?
If parsing the output of ls is dangerous because it can break on some funky characters (spaces, \n, ... ), what's the best way to know the number of files in a directory?
I usualy rely on find to ...
7
votes
2answers
251 views
List all files with the same inode number?
Lets say, when I do ls -li inside a directory, I get this:
12353538 -rw-r--r-- 6 me me 1650 2013-01-10 16:33 fun.txt
As the output shows, the file fun.txt has 6 hard links; and the inode number is ...
7
votes
3answers
906 views
Why is sorting files by access time not working?
I tried to use command
ls --time=atime
it was working in one directory but wasn't working in another directory.
I opened certain files in vim, evince and other applications but after the
command file ...
7
votes
2answers
227 views
Is there a correct way to list the subdirectories of the current directory?
I can find the subdirectories of a directory by
ls -d -- */
or
ls -l | grep "^d"
but both of these seem indirect, and I would imagine that there would be a standard way to find just the ...
7
votes
1answer
465 views
Why isn't the ls command listing huge filesizes?
In my Redhat Linux, I am getting the following error when executing the ls command.
# ls
ls: sugar.sql: Value too large for defined data type
7
votes
2answers
156 views
Different colour for the KiB range in `ls -l`
Is there any sane way to highlight the 4th, 5th, and 6th columns from the right of the file size in ls -l? My intention is to make it easy to read a file size be it in bytes, KiBs, or MiBs. I do know ...
7
votes
2answers
1k views
Testing LS_COLORS in zsh
A few years ago I found an interesting code snippet that prints each type of file in its corresponding color according to the colors set up in LS_COLORS. Unfortunately, I can't remember the link ...
6
votes
1answer
6k views
Bash: assign ls | grep to a variable and echo it with a string
I want to assign the result of an expression to a variable and concatenate it with a string, then echo it. Here's what I've got:
#!/bin/bash
cd ~/Desktop;
thefile= ls -t -U | grep -m 1 "Screen Shot";
...
6
votes
3answers
316 views
Bash autocomplete gives different file name than ls
An incredibly strange thing just happened. Through a serious typo, I entered
cp filename.xsl .^?~
Yeah, that's right, dot-caret-questionmark-tilde! Truth is stranger than fiction.
It gets weirder. ...
6
votes
1answer
286 views
How do I get a long listing for a single directory?
I want to see a long listing for a single directory. When I type ls -lha, I see this:
drwxrwxr-x 4 username groupname 4.0K 2010-08-05 09:55 files
drwxrwxr-x 7 username groupname 4.0K 2010-08-05 ...
6
votes
1answer
119 views
Why are reboot, shutdown and poweroff symlinks to systemctl?
In Arch Linux, if I do ls -l in /sbin, I can see that reboot, shutdown and poweroff are all symlinks to /usr/bin/systemctl. But issuing reboot, shutdown and systemctl commands obviously does not all ...
6
votes
3answers
1k views
How do i open all files that are the result of a ls command?
I'd like to open all text files that are the result of a ls command using a text editor. How do i do this?
6
votes
4answers
2k views
How do I make ls sort underscore characters first?
I like being able to name files and directories with an underscore prefix if it's something I want to keep separate from other files and directories at the same level. On Windows and Mac, for example, ...
6
votes
1answer
369 views
Using dircolors, how do I change the color of my subversion folders
Below is a sample of my dircolors file, I want subversion folders (.svn) to be colored, but i guess the extension section only applies to file names.
How do i set colors for directories with ...
5
votes
4answers
332 views
Shell command to get all the files from a complex directory structure
I'm looking for a shell command in order to get all the files in a complex directory structure. By complex directory structure I mean that there's a root folder with more than 150 subfolders and for ...
5
votes
3answers
276 views
When you type “ls -a”, what is the significance of “.” and “..”?
Whenever you type ls -a into the command prompt, you usually get all of your folders, files, and then you see that the first two entries are . and ..
Just curious, but what is the significance of ...
5
votes
5answers
5k views
How to report number of files in all subdirectories?
I need to inspect all sub-directories and report how many files (without further recursion) they contain:
directoryName1 numberOfFiles
directoryName2 numberOfFiles
5
votes
4answers
639 views
How to get the relative paths with ls?
I'd like to do something like this to move the last two downloaded files:
mv ` ls -rt ~/Downloads/ | tail -2 ` .
Unfortunately, ls only gives the filenames. How can I adapt the code above?
(Before ...
5
votes
2answers
219 views
How do regular expressions differ from wildcards used to filter files
While we use * to denote zero or more previous characters in grep, we use *.c to find all C files when we use it with the ls command like ls *.c. Could someone tell how the use of * differs in these ...
5
votes
4answers
2k views
How to find a file in the filesystem from the command line?
I'm fairly new to Linux, and I've now found myself in a situation where I'd like to find where a file (with a partially-known filename) is in the file system. I'd like to know how to do this from the ...
