ls – Unix users and sysadmins cannot live without this two letter command. Whether you use it 10 times a day or 100 times a day, knowing the power of ls command can make your command line journey enjoyable.
In this article, let us review 15 practical examples of the mighty ls command.
1. Open Last Edited File Using ls -t
To open the last edited file in the current directory use the combination of ls, head and vi commands as shown below.
ls -t sorts the file by modification time, showing the last edited file first. head -1 picks up this first file.
$ vi first-long-file.txt $ vi second-long-file.txt $ vi `ls -t | head -1` [Note: This will open the last file you edited (i.e second-long-file.txt)]
2. Display One File Per Line Using ls -1
To show single entry per line, use -1 option as shown below.
$ ls -1 bin boot cdrom dev etc home initrd initrd.img lib
3. Display All Information About Files/Directories Using ls -l
To show long listing information about the file/directory.
$ ls -l -rw-r----- 1 ramesh team-dev 9275204 Jun 13 15:27 mthesaur.txt.gz
- 1st Character – File Type: First character specifies the type of the file.
In the example above the hyphen (-) in the 1st character indicates that this is a normal file. Following are the possible file type options in the 1st character of the ls -l output.- Field Explanation
- - normal file
- d directory
- s socket file
- l link file
- Field 1 – File Permissions: Next 9 character specifies the files permission. Each 3 characters refers to the read, write, execute permissions for user, group and world In this example, -rw-r—– indicates read-write permission for user, read permission for group, and no permission for others.
- Field 2 – Number of links: Second field specifies the number of links for that file. In this example, 1 indicates only one link to this file.
- Field 3 – Owner: Third field specifies owner of the file. In this example, this file is owned by username ‘ramesh’.
- Field 4 – Group: Fourth field specifies the group of the file. In this example, this file belongs to ”team-dev’ group.
- Field 5 – Size: Fifth field specifies the size of file. In this example, ‘9275204′ indicates the file size.
- Field 6 – Last modified date & time: Sixth field specifies the date and time of the last modification of the file. In this example, ‘Jun 13 15:27′ specifies the last modification time of the file.
- Field 7 – File name: The last field is the name of the file. In this example, the file name is mthesaur.txt.gz.
4. Display File Size in Human Readable Format Using ls -lh
Use ls -lh (h stands for human readable form), to display file size in easy to read format. i.e M for MB, K for KB, G for GB.
$ ls -l
-rw-r----- 1 ramesh team-dev 9275204 Jun 12 15:27 arch-linux.txt.gz*
$ ls -lh
-rw-r----- 1 ramesh team-dev 8.9M Jun 12 15:27 arch-linux.txt.gz
5. Display Directory Information Using ls -ld
When you use “ls -l” you will get the details of directories content. But if you want the details of directory then you can use -d option as., For example, if you use ls -l /etc will display all the files under etc directory. But, if you want to display the information about the /etc/ directory, use -ld option as shown below.
$ ls -l /etc total 3344 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 15276 Oct 5 2004 a2ps.cfg -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2562 Oct 5 2004 a2ps-site.cfg drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 Feb 2 2007 acpi -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 48 Feb 8 2008 adjtime drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 Feb 2 2007 alchemist $ ls -ld /etc drwxr-xr-x 21 root root 4096 Jun 15 07:02 /etc
6. Order Files Based on Last Modified Time Using ls -lt
To sort the file names displayed in the order of last modification time use the -t option. You will be finding it handy to use it in combination with -l option.
$ ls -lt total 76 drwxrwxrwt 14 root root 4096 Jun 22 07:36 tmp drwxr-xr-x 121 root root 4096 Jun 22 07:05 etc drwxr-xr-x 13 root root 13780 Jun 22 07:04 dev drwxr-xr-x 13 root root 4096 Jun 20 23:12 root drwxr-xr-x 12 root root 4096 Jun 18 08:31 home drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 May 17 21:21 sbin lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 11 May 17 20:29 cdrom -> media/cdrom drwx------ 2 root root 16384 May 17 20:29 lost+found drwxr-xr-x 15 root root 4096 Jul 2 2008 var
7. Order Files Based on Last Modified Time (In Reverse Order) Using ls -ltr
To sort the file names in the last modification time in reverse order. This will be showing the last edited file in the last line which will be handy when the listing goes beyond a page. This is my default ls usage. Anytime I do ls, I always use ls -ltr as I find this very convenient.
$ ls -ltr total 76 drwxr-xr-x 15 root root 4096 Jul 2 2008 var drwx------ 2 root root 16384 May 17 20:29 lost+found lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 11 May 17 20:29 cdrom -> media/cdrom drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 May 17 21:21 sbin drwxr-xr-x 12 root root 4096 Jun 18 08:31 home drwxr-xr-x 13 root root 4096 Jun 20 23:12 root drwxr-xr-x 13 root root 13780 Jun 22 07:04 dev drwxr-xr-x 121 root root 4096 Jun 22 07:05 etc drwxrwxrwt 14 root root 4096 Jun 22 07:36 tmp
8. Display Hidden Files Using ls -a (or) ls -A
To show all the hidden files in the directory, use ‘-a option’. Hidden files in Unix starts with ‘.’ in its file name.
$ ls -a [rnatarajan@asp-dev ~]$ ls -a . Debian-Info.txt .. CentOS-Info.txt .bash_history Fedora-Info.txt .bash_logout .lftp .bash_profile libiconv-1.11.tar.tar .bashrc libssh2-0.12-1.2.el4.rf.i386.rpm
It will show all the files including the ‘.’ (current directory) and ‘..’ (parent directory). To show the hidden files, but not the ‘.’ (current directory) and ‘..’ (parent directory), use option -A.
$ ls -A Debian-Info.txt Fedora-Info.txt CentOS-Info.txt Red-Hat-Info.txt .bash_history SUSE-Info.txt .bash_logout .lftp .bash_profile libiconv-1.11.tar.tar .bashrc libssh2-0.12-1.2.el4.rf.i386.rpm [Note: . and .. are not displayed here]
9. Display Files Recursively Using ls -R
$ ls /etc/sysconfig/networking devices profiles $ ls -R /etc/sysconfig/networking /etc/sysconfig/networking: devices profiles /etc/sysconfig/networking/devices: /etc/sysconfig/networking/profiles: default /etc/sysconfig/networking/profiles/default:
To show all the files recursively, use -R option. When you do this from /, it shows all the unhidden files in the whole file system recursively.
10. Display File Inode Number Using ls -i
Sometimes you may want to know the inone number of a file for internal maintenance. Use -i option as shown below to display inone number. Using inode number you can remove files that has special characters in it’s name as explained in the example#6 of the find command article.
$ ls -i /etc/xinetd.d/ 279694 chargen 279724 cups-lpd 279697 daytime-udp 279695 chargen-udp 279696 daytime 279698 echo
11. Hide Control Characters Using ls -q
To print question mark instead of the non graphics control characters use the -q option.
ls -q
12. Display File UID and GID Using ls -n
Lists the output like -l, but shows the uid and gid in numeric format instead of names.
$ ls -l ~/.bash_profile -rw-r--r-- 1 ramesh ramesh 909 Feb 8 11:48 /home/ramesh/.bash_profile $ ls -n ~/.bash_profile -rw-r--r-- 1 511 511 909 Feb 8 11:48 /home/ramesh/.bash_profile [Note: This display 511 for uid and 511 for gid]
13. Visual Classification of Files With Special Characters Using ls -F
Instead of doing the ‘ls -l’ and then the checking for the first character to determine the type of file. You can use -F which classifies the file with different special character for different kind of files.
$ ls -F Desktop/ Documents/ Ubuntu-App@ firstfile Music/ Public/ Templates/
Thus in the above output,
- / – directory.
- nothing – normal file.
- @ – link file.
- * – Executable file
14. Visual Classification of Files With Colors Using ls -F
Recognizing the file type by the color in which it gets displayed is an another kind in classification of file. In the above output directories get displayed in blue, soft links get displayed in green, and ordinary files gets displayed in default color.
$ ls --color=auto Desktop Documents Examples firstfile Music Pictures Public Templates Videos
15. Useful ls Command Aliases
You can take some required ls options in the above, and make it as aliases. We suggest the following.
- Long list the file with size in human understandable form.
alias ll="ls -lh"
- Classify the file type by appending special characters.
alias lv="ls -F"
- Classify the file type by both color and special character.
alias ls="ls -F --color=auto"
Awesome Linux Articles
Following are few awesome 15 examples articles that you might find helpful.
- Get a Grip on the Grep! – 15 Practical Grep Command Examples
- Linux Crontab: 15 Awesome Cron Job Examples
- Mommy, I found it! — 15 Practical Linux Find Command Examples
- 15 Examples To Master Linux Command Line History
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My name is Ramesh Natarajan. I will be posting instruction guides, how-to, troubleshooting tips and tricks on Linux, database, hardware, security and web. My focus is to write articles that will either teach you or help you resolve a problem. Read more about 
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I never imagined that I’d value an email subscription more than I do with The Geek Stuff. Honestly, I just did it for the book–but I’m finding that I’m learning enormous amounts from these entries.
I couldn’t understand the use of “-q” switch so I googled around and I found an interesting example at the end of this page:
http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=169504
Very useful!, thanks a lot
Wow!!!! great post…
Thanks for this blog post. I wasn’t familiar with ls -A. Rgds Vince
For the recursion command, I’ll recommend ls -R -1
yeah!!!….good post…..but, how we make to list files and directories en groups?
Hi,
There are other characters which can be seen when using the ls -l command. However, I am not sure what those mean.
Is there any chance that you can tell me what those character refere to?
The following are the three additional ones which I need to know:
crw-r–r–
brw-r–r–
prw-r–r–
So it is c, b & p that I need to know the meaning for.
listing directory only : ls -d */
You can get the list of hidden directory only using the following command:
ls -d .*/
http://gaganonthenet.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=240
@George, Thanks for those very kind words. I’m very happy to hear that the eBook and these articles are being helpful to you.
@Francesco, Thanks for reference to the article that explains -q option. To make it easy for others, I’m quoting that example here.
@Gabriel, @KaliSurf, @Vince, Thanks for the nice comment. I’m glad that you found this article helpful.
@Binny, Combining the item#2 (ls -1) and item#9 (ls -R) mentioned in the article and using it as (ls -R -1) is definitely a good idea that makes the output readable. Thanks for pointing that out.
@Jose, As Billyduct pointed out, Use ls -d */ to display only the directories and not the files.
@Gagan,
c indicates Character devices. For example, do “ls -l /dev/tty*” — you’ll see c in front of all terminal devices as shown below.
b indicates Block Devices. For example, do “ls -l /dev/sda*” (or) hda and you’ll see b in front of all hard disk partitions indicating it is a block device as shown below.
p indicates it is a named pipe (FIFO) as shown below.
@Billyduc, Excellent example to show only directories in the ls output using ls -d */ . Thanks for the suggestion.
part of my .bashrc file:
alias la=’ls -lA’
alias l.=’ls -ld .*’
alias ld=’ls -ld .’
alias ll=’ls -lFh’
alias lt=’ls -lFhtr’
but i’ll now replace ld wit ls -ld */ for it’s much more usefull. the only new one for me =)
JFYI notice the numbers that appears instead of ‘file size’ column in ls -l /dev
These are major and minor numbers of device. You can examine their meanings in
/usr/src/linux/Documentation/devices.txt
documentation file (or where you have your kernel documentation located). If you’re really interested this can entertain you for quite a while =))
@Nardi,
Thanks for sharing your .bashrc aliases. You got very practical and useful ls aliases setup. Also, thanks for pointing the devices.txt documentation file location that talks about major and minor numbers.
For those who are interested, we already wrote an article about Linux Major and Minor Device Numbers.
changing mode is very critical tochange to root
Thanks. Your tutorials are very clear and helpful.
Thanks for this very useful summary of the ls command.
Good Post
But what is the ls command to list the files by Size wise(Ascending / Descending)
@Arun
read manual (type: man ls)
$ ls -S … biggest files first
$ ls -Sr … smallest files first
or if you like it long and understandable (I thing this is handy only for aliases in config files):
$ ls –sort=size –reverse
Great !!! Really helpful post…. Thanks a lot……
List files based on their size.
ls -l|sort -n