ls command one liners

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Display All Information about Files/Directories Using ls -l

# ls -l

-rw-r----- 1 samual team-dev 9275204 Jun 13 15:27 sample.txt

Let’s split above output in parts as below,

- à Field 0

rw-r-----  à Field 1

1 à Field 2

samual à Field 3

team-dev à Field 4

9275204 à Field 5

Jun 13 15:27 à Field 6

sample.txt à Field 7

Description of each field can be understood as below,

Field 0:- File Type

Possible values are as below,

 - normal file

 d directory

 s socket file

 l link file

Field 1:- File Permissions

9 character specifies the files permission. Each 3 characters refers to the read, write, execute permissions for user, group and world/others

Example

-rw-r à indicates read-write permission for user, read permission for group, and no permission for others

Field 2:- Number of links

This field specifies the number of links for that file

Example

1 indicates only one link to this file

Field 3:- Owner

This field specifies owner of the file

Example

File in example is owned by username ‘samual’

Field 4:- Group

This field specifies the group of the file

Example

This file belongs to ‘team-dev’ group

Field 5:- Size

This field specifies the size of file

Example

’9275204' indicates the file size in bytes

Field 6:- Last modified date & time

This field specifies the date and time of the last modification of the file

Example

‘Jun 13 15:27’ specifies the last modification time of the file.

Field 7:- File name

This last field is the name of the file

Example

The file name is sample.txt

Display File Size in Human Readable Format Using ls -lh

# ls -lh

Display Directory Information Using ls -ld

# ls -ld /etc

Order Files Based on Last Modified Time Using ls -lt

# ls -lt

Order files based on last modified time (In Reverse Order) using ls -ltr

# ls -ltr

Display Hidden Files Using ls -a (or) ls -A

This will display all hidden files in Unix starts with ‘.’ in its file name including the ‘.’ (Current directory) and ‘..’ (Parent directory).

# ls -a

Display Files Recursively Using ls -R

# ls  /etc/sysconfig/networking

# ls  -R /etc/sysconfig/networking

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

# ls -i /etc/xinetd.d/

Hide Control Characters Using ls -q

To print question mark instead of the non-graphics control characters use the -q option

# ls -q

Display File UID and GID Using ls -n

This will display the UID in place of user and GID in place of group as described in the field description in ls -l command output

# ls -l ~/.bash_profile

# ls -n ~/.bash_profile

Visual Classification of Files with Special Characters Using ls -F

# ls -F

Visual Classification of Files with colours using ls -F

# ls --color=auto

Note:-

Recognizing the file type by the colour in which it gets displayed is an another kind in classification of file

-          Directories get displayed in blue

-          Soft links get displayed in green

-          Ordinary files gets displayed in default colour

To see size for the files present in one directory passed as argument

# ls -s folder

Useful ls Command Aliases

-          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"

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