Linux commands: ls
A quick guide to the ls command, used to list the files in a folder
Inside a folder you can list all the files that the folder contains using the ls
command:
ls
If you add a folder name or path, it will print that folder contents:
ls /bin
ls
accepts a lot of options. One of my favorite options combinations is -al
. Try it:
ls -al /bin
compared to the plain ls
, this returns much more information.
You have, from left to right:
- the file permissions (and if your system supports ACLs, you get an ACL flag as well)
- the number of links to that file
- the owner of the file
- the group of the file
- the file size in bytes
- the file modified datetime
- the file name
This set of data is generated by the l
option. The a
option instead also shows the hidden files.
Hidden files are files that start with a dot (.
).
This command works on Linux, macOS, WSL, and anywhere you have a UNIX environment
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