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Behavior

When invoked with no path argument, ls lists the files of the working directory. Otherwise, it includes each specified file and each file of a specified directory.

Common options include:

• -a Includes all files; even those starting with . which on Unix-based systems are otherwise not included
• -A Same as -a, but excludes the special entries . (working directory) and .. (parent of working directory)
• -l Selects the long output format which extends the default output of the file name with additional information including type (- for regular file, d for directory, l for symbolic link, n for network file, s for socket, p for named pipe (FIFO), c for character special file, bfor block special file), permissions, hard link count, owning user and group, size, last-modified timestamp
• -h Output sizes as so-called human readable by using units of KB, MB, GB instead of bytes. This option is not part of the POSIX standard, although implemented in several systems, e.g., GNU coreutils in 1997,¹⁰ FreeBSD 4.5 in 2002,¹¹ and Solaris 9 in 2002.¹²

• -R Include files of a directory tree, recursively
• -t Sort the list by modification time (default sort is alphabetically)
• -u Sort the list by last access time
• -c Sort the list by last attribute (status) change time
• -r Reverse the order, for example most recent time last
• --full-time Show times down to the millisecond instead of just the minute
• -1 One entry per line
• -m Stream format; list items across the page, separated by commas.
• -g Include group but not owner
• -o Include owner but not group (when combined with -g both group and owner are suppressed)
• -d Show information about a directory or symbolic link, rather than the contents of a directory or the link's target
• -F Append a "/" to directory names and a "*" to executable files

Example

The following example shows the long form output:

$ ls -l drwxr--r-- 1 fjones editors 4096 Mar 2 12:52 drafts -rw-r--r-- 3 fjones editors 30405 Mar 2 12:52 edition-32 -r-xr-xr-x 1 fjones bookkeepers 8460 Jan 16 2022 edit.sh

Each output line includes a file type letter ('-' for file, 'd' for directory), 9 letters representing permissions, the number of hard links, owning user, owning group, size, modification date, name. In the working directory, the owner fjones has a directory named drafts, a regular file named edition-32, and an executable named edit.sh which is "old", i.e. modified more than 6 months ago as indicated by the display of the year.

┌─────────── file (not a directory) |┌─────────── read-write (no execution) permissions for the owner |│ ┌───────── read-only permissions for the group |│ │ ┌─────── read-only permissions for others |│ │ │ ┌── 3 hard links |│ │ │ │ ┌── owning user |│ │ │ │ │ ┌── owning group |│ │ │ │ │ │ ┌── file size in bytes |│ │ │ │ │ │ │ ┌── last modified on |│ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ ┌── filename -rw-r--r-- 3 fjones editors 30405 Mar 2 12:52 edition-32

Some implementations support color output to indicate metadata. GNU ls provides the --color option¹³ which enables using a database to control colors maintained using dircolors. FreeBSD ls provides the -G option which enables using the termcap database¹⁴ The following example shows possible color output:

-rw-r--r-- 1 tsmitt nregion 26650 Dec 20 11:16 audio.ogg brw-r--r-- 1 tsmitt nregion 64 Jan 27 05:52 bd-block-device crw-r--r-- 1 tsmitt nregion 255 Jan 26 13:57 cd-character-device -rw-r--r-- 1 tsmitt nregion 290 Jan 26 14:08 image.png drwxrwxr-x 2 tsmitt nregion 48 Jan 26 11:28 di-directory -rwxrwxr-x 1 tsmitt nregion 29 Jan 26 14:03 ex-executable -rw-r--r-- 1 tsmitt nregion 0 Dec 20 09:39 fi-regular-file lrwxrwxrwx 1 tsmitt nregion 3 Jan 26 11:44 ln-soft-link -> dir lrwxrwxrwx 1 tsmitt nregion 15 Dec 20 10:57 or-orphan-link -> mi-missing-link drwxr-xrwx 2 tsmitt nregion 4096 Dec 20 10:58 ow-other-writeable-dir prw-r--r-- 1 tsmitt nregion 0 Jan 26 11:50 pi-pipe -rwxr-sr-x 1 tsmitt nregion 0 Dec 20 11:05 sg-setgid srw-rw-rw- 1 tsmitt nregion 0 Jan 26 12:00 so-socket drwxr-xr-t 2 tsmitt nregion 4096 Dec 20 10:58 st-sticky-dir -rwsr-xr-x 1 tsmitt nregion 0 Dec 20 11:09 su-setuid -rw-r--r-- 1 tsmitt nregion 10240 Dec 20 11:12 compressed.gz drwxrwxrwt 2 tsmitt nregion 4096 Dec 20 11:10 tw-sticky-other-writeable-dir

See also

• stat (Unix) – Unix system call for querying file metadataPages displaying short descriptions of redirect targets
• chown – Shell command for changing the owner of a file
• chgrp – Shell command for changing the group of a file
• du (Unix) – Shell command for reporting file system storage use
• mdls – macOS search featurePages displaying short descriptions of redirect targets
• User identifier (Unix) – Value identifying a user account in Unix and Unix-like operating systemsPages displaying short descriptions of redirect targets
• Group identifier (Unix) – Unix/POSIX system account group number; numeric value used to represent a specific groupPages displaying short descriptions of redirect targets
• List of POSIX commands
• Unix directory structure – Directory structure used by a Unix-like operating systemPages displaying short descriptions of redirect targets

External links

The Wikibook Guide to Unix has a page on the topic of: Commands

• ls – Shell and Utilities Reference, The Single UNIX Specification, Version 5 from The Open Group
• ls(1) – FreeBSD General Commands Manual
• ls(1) – NetBSD General Commands Manual
• ls(1) – OpenBSD General Commands Manual
• ls(1) – Solaris 11.4 User Commands Reference Manual
• ls(1) – Linux User Manual – User Commands
• ls(1) – Plan 9 Programmer's Manual, Volume 1
• ls(1) – Inferno General commands Manual
• GNU ls source code (as part of coreutils)
• ls at the LinuxQuestions.org wiki

References

1. "Native Win32 ports of some GNU utilities". unxutils.sourceforge.net. http://unxutils.sourceforge.net/ ↩

2. "EFI Shells and Scripting". Intel. Archived from the original on September 27, 2013. Retrieved 2013-09-25. https://web.archive.org/web/20130927203229/http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/efi-shells-and-scripting/ ↩

3. "MSX-DOS2 Tools User's Manual - MSX-DOS2 TOOLS ユーザーズマニュアル". April 1, 1993 – via Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/MSXDOS2TOOLS ↩

4. "List folder contents - MATLAB ls". https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/ls.html ↩

5. "Function Reference: Ls". Octave Forge. https://octave.sourceforge.io/octave/function/ls.html ↩

6. "Multics manual page for ls or list command". 14 February 1985. https://web.mit.edu/multics-history/source/Multics/doc/info_segments/list.info ↩

7. Fischer, Eric. "A Brief History of the 'ls' command". The Linux Documentation Project. https://tldp.org/LDP/LG/issue48/fischer.html ↩

8. "Multics programmer's manual - Commands and active functions" (PDF). p. 397. http://bitsavers.org/pdf/honeywell/large_systems/multics/AG92-03A_multicsCmds_Feb80.pdf ↩

9. ls – Shell and Utilities Reference, The Single UNIX Specification, Version 5 from The Open Group https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9799919799/utilities/ls.html ↩

10. "(decode_switches): -h and -H override output units". coreutils.git. 1997-12-31. http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/coreutils.git/commit/src/ls.c?id=b76a4533046163978f7517f9ea6d3307bfa0a98a ↩

11. "[base] Log of /stable/10/bin/ls/ls.c". 2001-12-28. https://svnweb.freebsd.org/base?view=revision&revision=88591 ↩

12. What's New in the Solaris 9 Operating Environment, Sun Microsystems, 2002 http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19683-01/806-5202/6je7shk5c/index.html ↩

13. "General output formatting (GNU Coreutils 9.1)". www.gnu.org. Retrieved 2023-01-07. https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/html_node/General-output-formatting.html ↩

14. "FreeBSD Man Pages — ls". Retrieved June 23, 2013. http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=ls ↩