ls

ls is a shell command for listing files – including special files such as directories. Originally developed for Unix and later codified by POSIX and Single UNIX Specification.

• GNU Coreutils Project Homepage [EN]

• GNU Coreutils [EN] @ Fedora Package
• GNU Coreutils [EN] @ Homebrew Formula

• ls [EN] @ Wikipedia
• ls [DE] @ Wikipedia

Documentation

• ls [EN] @ GNU Coreutils Manual

• man 1 'ls'
  • BSD [EN]
  • GNU [EN]

Syntax

ls [PARAMETER ...] [FILE/DIRECTORY ...]

Parameters

General

The following parameters can be used with all version of ls:

NOTE:

The BSD version only supports the short form (e.g. -a) of these parameters!

-1

List one file per line.

-a, --all

Do not ignore entries starting with .

-A, --almost-all

Like -a but do not list implied . and ..

--color[=WHEN]

Colorize the output. WHEN defaults to always or can be never or auto.

-F, --classify

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

• * for executables
• / for directories
• = for sockets
• > for doors
• @ for links
• | for fifos

-h, --human-readable

Print with -l sizes in human readable format (e.g. 1K, 234M, 2G).

-i, --inode

Print the index number of each file.

-l

Use a long listing format.

-r, --reverse

Reverse order while sorting.

-R, --recursive

List subdirectories recursively.

-s, --size

Print size of each file, in blocks.

-S

Sort by file size.

-t

Sort by modification time.

BSD

The following parameters can be used with the BSD version of ls:

-D FORMAT

When printing in the long (-l) format, use FORMAT to format the date and time output. The argument format is a string used by strftime.

-G

Enable colorized output.

GNU

The following parameters can be used with the GNU version of ls:

--time-style=STYLE

With -l, show times using style STYLE: full-iso, long-iso, iso, locale, +FORMAT. FORMAT is interpreted like date.

-X

Sort alphabetically by entry extension.

-Z, --context

Print any SELinux security context of each file.

Examples

List all subdirectories and files of a directory

ls -laFh

List only subdirectories of a directory

ls -la | grep '^d'

Define aliases for directory listing

if type -P 'eza' >'/dev/null' 2>&1; then              # eza
  alias ls="eza --classify --time-style='long-iso'"
  alias ll='ls --git --group --header --long'
  alias l='ll --all --all'
else
  if ls --context >'/dev/null' 2>&1; then             # GNU ls version
    alias ls="ls --classify --color --time-style='long-iso'"

    if type -P 'dircolors' >'/dev/null' 2>&1; then
      eval "$(dircolors -b)"
    fi
  else                                                # other ls versions
    alias ls="ls -D '%F %T' -F -G"
  fi

  alias ll='ls -h -l'
  alias l='ll -a'
fi

alias lr='l -R'
alias lt="l -r -s 'time'"