LS

 

NAME

ls – list directory contents  

SYNOPSIS

ls [OPTION]… [FILE]…  

DESCRIPTION

List information about the FILEs (the current directory by default). Sort entries alphabetically if none of -cftuvSUX nor –sort is specified.

Mandatory arguments to long options are mandatory for short options too.

-a, –all

do not ignore entries starting with .

-A, –almost-all

do not list implied . and ..

–author

with -l, print the author of each file

-b, –escape

print C-style escapes for nongraphic characters

–block-size=SIZE

scale sizes by SIZE before printing them; e.g., ‘–block-size=M’ prints sizes in units of 1,048,576 bytes; see SIZE format below

-B, –ignore-backups

do not list implied entries ending with ~

-c

with -lt: sort by, and show, ctime (time of last modification of file status information); with -l: show ctime and sort by name; otherwise: sort by ctime, newest first

-C

list entries by columns

–color[=WHEN]

colorize the output; WHEN can be ‘never’, ‘auto’, or ‘always’ (the default); more info below

-d, –directory

list directories themselves, not their contents

-D, –dired

generate output designed for Emacs’ dired mode

-f

do not sort, enable -aU, disable -ls –color

-F, –classify

append indicator (one of */=>@|) to entries

–file-type

likewise, except do not append ‘*’

–format=WORD

across -x, commas -m, horizontal -x, long -l, single-column -1, verbose -l, vertical -C

–full-time

like -l –time-style=full-iso

-g

like -l, but do not list owner

–group-directories-first

group directories before files;

can be augmented with a –sort option, but any use of –sort=none (-U) disables grouping

-G, –no-group

in a long listing, don’t print group names

-h, –human-readable

with -l and/or -s, print human readable sizes (e.g., 1K 234M 2G)

–si

likewise, but use powers of 1000 not 1024

-H, –dereference-command-line

follow symbolic links listed on the command line

–dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir

follow each command line symbolic link

that points to a directory

–hide=PATTERN

do not list implied entries matching shell PATTERN (overridden by -a or -A)

–indicator-style=WORD

append indicator with style WORD to entry names: none (default), slash (-p), file-type (–file-type), classify (-F)

-i, –inode

print the index number of each file

-I, –ignore=PATTERN

do not list implied entries matching shell PATTERN

-k, –kibibytes

default to 1024-byte blocks for disk usage

-l

use a long listing format

-L, –dereference

when showing file information for a symbolic link, show information for the file the link references rather than for the link itself

-m

fill width with a comma separated list of entries

-n, –numeric-uid-gid

like -l, but list numeric user and group IDs

-N, –literal

print raw entry names (don’t treat e.g. control characters specially)

-o

like -l, but do not list group information

-p, –indicator-style=slash

append / indicator to directories

-q, –hide-control-chars

print ? instead of nongraphic characters

–show-control-chars

show nongraphic characters as-is (the default, unless program is ‘ls’ and output is a terminal)

-Q, –quote-name

enclose entry names in double quotes

–quoting-style=WORD

use quoting style WORD for entry names: literal, locale, shell, shell-always, c, escape

-r, –reverse

reverse order while sorting

-R, –recursive

list subdirectories recursively

-s, –size

print the allocated size of each file, in blocks

-S

sort by file size

–sort=WORD

sort by WORD instead of name: none (-U), size (-S), time (-t), version (-v), extension (-X)

–time=WORD

with -l, show time as WORD instead of default modification time: atime or access or use (-u) ctime or status (-c); also use specified time as sort key if –sort=time

–time-style=STYLE

with -l, show times using style STYLE: full-iso, long-iso, iso, locale, or +FORMAT; FORMAT is interpreted like in ‘date’; if FORMAT is FORMAT1<newline>FORMAT2, then FORMAT1 applies to non-recent files and FORMAT2 to recent files; if STYLE is prefixed with ‘posix-‘, STYLE takes effect only outside the POSIX locale

-t

sort by modification time, newest first

-T, –tabsize=COLS

assume tab stops at each COLS instead of 8

-u

with -lt: sort by, and show, access time; with -l: show access time and sort by name; otherwise: sort by access time

-U

do not sort; list entries in directory order

-v

natural sort of (version) numbers within text

-w, –width=COLS

assume screen width instead of current value

-x

list entries by lines instead of by columns

-X

sort alphabetically by entry extension

-Z, –context

print any security context of each file

-1

list one file per line

–help

display this help and exit

–version

output version information and exit

The SIZE argument is an integer and optional unit (example: 10K is 10*1024). Units are K,M,G,T,P,E,Z,Y (powers of 1024) or KB,MB,… (powers of 1000).

Using color to distinguish file types is disabled both by default and with –color=never. With –color=auto, ls emits color codes only when standard output is connected to a terminal. The LS_COLORS environment variable can change the settings. Use the dircolors command to set it.  

Exit status:

0

if OK,

1

if minor problems (e.g., cannot access subdirectory),

2

if serious trouble (e.g., cannot access command-line argument).

 

AUTHOR

Written by Richard M. Stallman and David MacKenzie.  

REPORTING BUGS

GNU coreutils online help: <http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/>
Report ls translation bugs to <http://translationproject.org/team/>  

COPYRIGHT

Copyright © 2014 Free Software Foundation, Inc. License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it. There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.