Original author(s) | coreutils: Richard Stallman and David MacKenzie |
---|---|
Developer(s) | Various open-source and commercial developers |
Written in | C |
Operating system | Multics, Unix, Unix-like, Plan 9, Inferno, MSX-DOS |
Type | Command |
License | coreutils: GPLv3+ BusyBox: GPL-2.0-only Toybox: 0BSD Plan 9: MIT License |
In computing, ls
is a command to list computer files and directories in Unix and Unix-like operating systems. It is specified by POSIX and the Single UNIX Specification.
It is available in the EFI shell, [1] as a separate package for Microsoft Windows as part of the UnxUtils collection of native Win32 ports of common GNU Unix-like utilities, [2] or as part of ASCII's MSX-DOS2 Tools for MSX-DOS version 2. [3]
The numerical computing environments MATLAB and GNU Octave include an ls
function with similar functionality. [4] [5]
In other environments, such as DOS, OS/2, and Microsoft Windows, similar functionality is provided by the dir
command.
An ls
utility appeared in the first version of AT&T UNIX, the name inherited from a similar command in Multics also named 'ls', short for the word "list". [6] [7] [8] ls
is part of the X/Open Portability Guide since issue 2 of 1987. It was inherited into the first version of POSIX.1 and the Single Unix Specification. [9]
Unix and Unix-like operating systems maintain the idea of a working directory. When invoked without arguments, ls
lists the files in the working directory. If a directory is specified as an argument, the files in that directory are listed; if a file is specified, that file is listed. Multiple directories and files may be specified.
In many Unix-like systems, names starting with a dot (.
) are hidden. Examples are .
, which refers to the working directory, and ..
, which refers to its parent directory. Hidden names are not shown by default. With -a
, all names, including all hidden names, are shown. Using -A
shows all names, including hidden names, except for .
and ..
. File names specified explicitly (for example ls .secret
) are always listed.
Without options, ls
displays names only. The different implementations have different options, but common options include:
-l
Long format, displaying Unix file types, permissions, number of hard links, owner, group, size, last-modified date-time and name. If the modified date is older than 6 months, the time is replaced with the year. Some implementations add additional flags to permissions.-h
Output sizes in human readable format (e.g., 1K (kilobytes), 234M (megabytes), 2G (gigabytes)). 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] Additional options controlling how items are displayed include:
-R
Recursively list items in subdirectories.-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 second and 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.It may be possible to highlight different types of items with different colors. This is an area where implementations differ:
ls
uses the --color
option; [13] it checks the Unix file type, the file permissions and the file extension and uses its own database to control colors maintained using dircolors.ls
uses the -G
option; it checks only the Unix file type and file permissions and uses the termcap database [14] When the option to use color to indicate item types is selected, the output might look like:
The first letter can be one of 8 characters: -
, regular file; d
, directory; l
, symbolic (soft) link; n
, network files; s
, socket; p
, named pipe (FIFO); c
, character special file; b
, block special file.
-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
The following example demonstrates the output of the command:
$ 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 line shows the d
(directory) or -
(file) indicator, Unix file permission notation, number of hard links (1 or 3), the file's owner, the file's group, the file size, the modification date/time, and the file 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|│ │ │ ┌── number of hard links|│ │ │ │ ┌── owner|│ │ │ │ │ ┌── user group|│ │ │ │ │ │ ┌── file size in bytes|│ │ │ │ │ │ │ ┌── last modified on|│ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ ┌── filename-rw-r--r-- 3 fjones editors 30405 Mar 2 12:52 edition-32
In Unix and Unix-like operating systems, chmod is the command and system call used to change the access permissions and the special mode flags of file system objects. Collectively these were originally called its modes, and the name chmod was chosen as an abbreviation of change mode.
uniq
is a utility command on Unix, Plan 9, Inferno, and Unix-like operating systems which, when fed a text file or standard input, outputs the text with adjacent identical lines collapsed to one, unique line of text.
In computing, dir
(directory) is a command in various computer operating systems used for computer file and directory listing. It is one of the basic commands to help navigate the file system. The command is usually implemented as an internal command in the command-line interpreter (shell). On some systems, a more graphical representation of the directory structure can be displayed using the tree
command.
In Unix-like and some other operating systems, the pwd
command writes the full pathname of the current working directory to the standard output.
head is a program on Unix and Unix-like operating systems used to display the beginning of a text file or piped data.
The ln
command is a standard Unix command utility used to create a hard link or a symbolic link (symlink) to an existing file or directory. The use of a hard link allows multiple filenames to be associated with the same file since a hard link points to the inode of a given file, the data of which is stored on disk. On the other hand, symbolic links are special files that refer to other files by name.
The computer tool patch is a Unix program that updates text files according to instructions contained in a separate file, called a patch file. The patch file is a text file that consists of a list of differences and is produced by running the related diff program with the original and updated file as arguments. Updating files with patch is often referred to as applying the patch or simply patching the files.
tr is a command in Unix, Plan 9, Inferno, and Unix-like operating systems. It is an abbreviation of translate or transliterate, indicating its operation of replacing or removing specific characters in its input data set.
In computing, cp
is a command in various Unix and Unix-like operating systems for copying files and directories. The command has three principal modes of operation, expressed by the types of arguments presented to the program for copying a file to another file, one or more files to a directory, or for copying entire directories to another directory.
split
is a utility on Unix, Plan 9, and Unix-like operating systems most commonly used to split a computer file into two or more smaller files.
df is a standard Unix command used to display the amount of available disk space for file systems on which the invoking user has appropriate read access. df is typically implemented using the statfs or statvfs system calls.
In computing, umask
is a command that determines the settings of a mask that controls how file permissions are set for newly created files. It may also affect how the file permissions are changed explicitly. umask
is also a function that sets the mask, or it may refer to the mask itself, which is formally known as the file mode creation mask. The mask is a grouping of bits, each of which restricts how its corresponding permission is set for newly created files. The bits in the mask may be changed by invoking the umask
command.
The standard Unix command who
displays a list of users who are currently logged into the computer.
mv
is a Unix command that moves one or more files or directories from one place to another. If both filenames are on the same filesystem, this results in a simple file rename; otherwise the file content is copied to the new location and the old file is removed. Using mv
requires the user to have write permission for the directories the file will move between. This is because mv
changes the content of both directories involved in the move. When using the mv
command on files located on the same filesystem, the file's timestamp is not updated.
The seven standard Unix file types are regular, directory, symbolic link, FIFO special, block special, character special, and socket as defined by POSIX. Different OS-specific implementations allow more types than what POSIX requires. A file's type can be identified by the ls -l
command, which displays the type in the first character of the file-system permissions field.
rm
is a basic command on Unix and Unix-like operating systems used to remove objects such as computer files, directories and symbolic links from file systems and also special files such as device nodes, pipes and sockets, similar to the del
command in MS-DOS, OS/2, and Microsoft Windows. The command is also available in the EFI shell.
tail is a program available on Unix, Unix-like systems, FreeDOS and MSX-DOS used to display the tail end of a text file or piped data.
In computing, sleep is a command in Unix, Unix-like and other operating systems that suspends program execution for a specified time.
In computing, sort is a standard command line program of Unix and Unix-like operating systems, that prints the lines of its input or concatenation of all files listed in its argument list in sorted order. Sorting is done based on one or more sort keys extracted from each line of input. By default, the entire input is taken as sort key. Blank space is the default field separator. The command supports a number of command-line options that can vary by implementation. For instance the "-r
" flag will reverse the sort order.
cat
is a standard Unix utility that reads files sequentially, writing them to standard output. The name is derived from its function to (con)catenate files. It has been ported to a number of operating systems.
ls
source code (as part of coreutils) ls
at the LinuxQuestions.org wiki