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Can you make an alias command that basically formats the out put of ls into two columns, so that the output shows all the subdirectories in column 1 and all the files in column 2.

Example:

me:~$ ls
dir1               file1.txt
dir2               file2.xml
dir3               file3.pdf
dir4               file4.png
dir5               file5.wav
dir6               file6.mp3
...                file7.doc
                   ...

You get the idea :) (Maybe even put the executables in column 3?)

Is this possible?

OS version: Ubuntu 18.04

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  • Is there a particular reason why you removed all those things @Rui F Ribeiro ? Was it too personal? – Ciarán J. Hagen Dec 6 '18 at 11:20
  • It might be in your interest keeping your posts succinct and on topic, for getting more attention and up voting. There is also a tradition of editing posts here for consistency and redundancy. See our FAQ and keep around. btw, welcome. – Rui F Ribeiro Dec 6 '18 at 11:46
  • I will keep that in mind for future posts :D Thx – Ciarán J. Hagen Dec 6 '18 at 13:08
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stat around (you didn't comment on your OS version)? try

stat -c$'%F\n%n' * | awk '/^directory/ {getline LEFT[++DC]; next} {getline RIGHT[++FC]} END {for (i=1; i<=(DC>FC?DC:FC); i++) print LEFT[i], RIGHT[i]}' OFS="\t"
dir1    awkscript
dir2    fil1
dir3    file
dir4    file~
        file1
        file1~
        file2
|improve this answer
  • This is what I'm looking for, only it prints column 2 relative to column 1. This makes the second column non-parallell. Is there a way to fix this? – Ciarán J. Hagen Dec 6 '18 at 13:08
  • btw OS version: Ubuntu 18.04 Bionic Beaver – Ciarán J. Hagen Dec 6 '18 at 13:14
  • pipe it through column -nt. – RudiC Dec 6 '18 at 13:20
  • There is one small problem still, in that it prints files with a whitespace in their filename in two columns... Is there a way to remedy this? – Ciarán J. Hagen Dec 7 '18 at 14:33
  • You may want to change to using formatted printf with sufficient field widths in the awk script, also eliminating the need for the column command. – RudiC Dec 7 '18 at 14:37

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