7 Quirky 'ls' Command Tricks Every Linux User Should Know

We have covered most of the things on ‘ls’ command in last two articles of our Interview series. This article is the last part of the ‘ls command‘ series. If you have not gone through last two articles of this series you may visit the links below.

1. List the contents of a directory with time using various time styles.

To list the contents of a directory with times using style, we need to choose any of the below two methods.

# ls -l –time-style=[STYLE]               (Method A)

Note – The above switch (--time style must be run with switch -l, else it won’t serve the purpose).

# ls –full-time                           (Method B)

Replace [STYLE] with any of the below option.

full-iso
long-iso
iso
locale
+%H:%M:%S:%D

Note – In the above line H(Hour), M(Minute), S(Second), D(Date) can be used in any order.

Moreover you just choose those relevant and not all options. E.g., ls -l --time-style=+%H will show only hour.

ls -l --time-style=+%H:%M:%D will show Hour, Minute and date.

# ls -l --time-style=full-iso

# ls -l --time-style=long-iso

# ls -l --time-style=iso

# ls -l --time-style=locale

# ls -l --time-style=+%H:%M:%S:%D

# ls --full-time

2. Output the contents of a directory in various formats such as separated by commas, horizontal, long, vertical, across, etc.

Contents of directory can be listed using ls command in various format as suggested below.

across
comma
horizontal
long
single-column
verbose
vertical

# ls –-format=across
# ls --format=comma
# ls --format=horizontal
# ls --format=long
# ls --format=single-column
# ls --format=verbose
# ls --format=vertical

3. Use ls command to append indicators like (/[email protected]|) in output to the contents of the directory.

The option -p with ‘ls‘ command will server the purpose. It will append one of the above indicator, based upon the type of file.

# ls -p

4. Sort the contents of directory on the basis of extension, size, time and version.

We can use options like --extension to sort the output by extension, size by extension --size, time by using extension -t and version using extension -v.

Also we can use option --none which will output in general way without any sorting in actual.

# ls --sort=extension
# ls --sort=size
# ls --sort=time
# ls --sort=version
# ls --sort=none

5. Print numeric UID and GID for every contents of a directory using ls command.

The above scenario can be achieved using flag -n (Numeric-uid-gid) along with ls command.

# ls -n

6. Print the contents of a directory on standard output in more columns than specified by default.

Well ls command output the contents of a directory according to the size of the screen automatically.

We can however manually assign the value of screen width and control number of columns appearing. It can be done using switch ‘--width‘.

# ls --width 80
# ls --width 100
# ls --width 150

Note: You can experiment what value you should pass with width flag.

7. Include manual tab size at the contents of directory listed by ls command instead of default 8.

# ls --tabsize=[value]

Note: Specify the [Value]= Numeric value.

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17 thoughts on “7 Quirky ‘ls’ Command Tricks Every Linux User Should Know”

Manuel Malagon

June 4, 2021 at 5:54 pm

Is it possible to sort by extension then alphabetically? In other words, sort alphabetically by extension.?
Darren Evans

May 26, 2021 at 11:38 am

The different file/directory/link/socket etc indicator styles are only seen with the -F option.

The -p option only appends a slash to the name of directories.

One of my preferred options is –group-directories-first which does exactly what it says.
fraol

May 24, 2021 at 2:34 pm

Hi, am new up here…

There was a question asking ”What is the ls option that prints the author of a file?” and I googled for the question and found an answer saying ”We need to use the option '--author' along with option '-l' to print the author name of each file.”
- Ravi Saive
  
  May 25, 2021 at 12:10 pm
  
  @Fraol,
  
  Thanks for sharing the tip, hope it will help other users…
Paolo

April 7, 2020 at 1:21 pm

Very interesting, but I have one question: is it possible to list files from their name? For instance: if I have 1000 files and some of them have the part of the name as “name (1).txt“, can I list them just searching the last part of the name “(1).txt“?
- john
  
  September 17, 2020 at 3:29 am
```
# ls *(1).txt
# ls -option  [regular expression]
```
  Regular Expressions are considered a separate topic, and a part of most of the commands in linux
  
  They are also an art form.
  - paolo
    
    May 25, 2021 at 12:49 pm
    Sorry, but it doesn’t go!
    
    Here what I’ve got:
    
    [email protected]:/media/Disk_D/Foto/DCIM$ ls *(1).jpg ls: Cannot access '* (1) .jpg': File or directory does not exist
    - Darren Evans
      
      May 26, 2021 at 11:54 am
      
      In Bash shell doing
      
      ls a(1).jpg
      
      results in the error message
      
      bash: syntax error near unexpected token `('
      
      In Bash and tcsh (and most other shells), parentheses have to be escaped or enclosed in quotes. Wildcards must not be enclosed in quotes or they will not be expanded by the shell.
      
      So for filenames containing parentheses eg a(1).jpg b(1).jpg, this ls command will work
      
      ls *"(1).jpg"
      
      or if you prefer to have the quotes just around the critical part
      
      ls *"(1)".jpg
      
      If you files names contained quotes (double or single), then you would have to escape the quotes themselves to list them.
Arthur Pedant

June 25, 2018 at 2:08 am

You forgot to mention that the setting of LC_COLLATE (and/or LC_ALL) will affect the order of sorting in the display of ls directory listings.
Dennis

December 15, 2017 at 3:03 pm

I have one question, let’s say I created 5 files per day (together i.e. 5 days), and I want to see each day only once. How can I do that?
Brian Eschner

June 10, 2017 at 12:09 am

I like my tab-stops to be every 4 characters. I set that in vi, so then I added a startup command of “tabs 4” in bash. ‘ls‘ is one of the few commands that breaks, so I aliased my ‘ls‘ command to be ‘ls -T4“. Works great now, EXCEPT when I go to Full-Screen (in an Exceed XTerm window). ANY IDEA WHY?

But if I rerun the ‘tabs’ and ‘alias’ (of ‘ls’) again, then it works, and I have NO idea why
- Duncan
  
  May 25, 2021 at 9:47 pm
  
  I’m guessing that it’s any change of the terminal window size, not just going full-screen. That will reset a bunch of spacing-related stuff, obviously including the terminal tabs set.
  
  I’d suggest setting the bash PROMPT_COMMAND (or possibly one of PS0/PS1/PS2) environmental variable to include your desired tabs command so it’s run automatically at each prompt. See the bash manpage or info pages for the details.
Mohan

June 9, 2017 at 8:21 pm

This is really good stuff. Muchas-Gracias señor!
ankurkeelu

March 28, 2015 at 11:54 am

Thanks for the valuable information about ls commands !! Hey can you post about the boot process or can you provide me some good link through which i can understand the boot process in linux
- Avishek Kumar
  
  March 30, 2015 at 12:35 pm
  
  Welcome @ ankurkeelu,
  we will be coming up with your suggestions very soon.
Tomasz

March 24, 2015 at 10:13 pm

Very informative! Thanks!
- Avishek Kumar
  
  March 25, 2015 at 2:03 pm
  
  Welcome Tomasz

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