ls vs. ls -l

[enk]

Subjecting myself to the danger of asking a stupid question like vi vs. vim...

So, everyone knows ls, but who really uses it in its raw form?

Personally, I have trouble reading the two dimensional output of ls, so I've aliased lf to ls -l.

[zenten]

I find the ls -l has too much extraneous information that makes it hard to look through. I use it when I need it, but that's not often.

[enk]

If all that info annoyed me, I'd use ls -1 so I got the output in one column. I find several columns harder to look through both when I can't remember exactly what I'm looking for or if it's something specific.

The only advantage of pure ls I can see is that it crams more filenames into one screen, which is useful in folders with a lots of content. And then again, if that output fills more than one screen, ls -x would make it easier too look through. Or even ls -m

[Dingbats]

I use ls normally, and ls -l when I need to know the permissions/sizes/etc of stuff.

[zenten]

If all that info annoyed me, I'd use ls -1 so I got the output in one column. I find several columns harder to look through both when I can't remember exactly what I'm looking for or if it's something specific.

The only advantage of pure ls I can see is that it crams more filenames into one screen, which is useful in folders with a lots of content. And then again, if that output fills more than one screen, ls -x would make it easier too look through. Or even ls -m

I don't have an issue with columns. It's matching up entries in a column that takes more brainpower.

[wing]

I use raw ls. It's cool when I have less than a screenfull of stuff to be displayed anyway. If I have more, ls | less which arranges it into a single column.

I only use ls -l when I need the extra info.

[Elenion]

I use ls. Only use ls -l if i need the extra info for some reason. But then again, I only use unix when at uni, at home I use windows..^^

[OmenPigeon]

If you were really desperate for the output of ls in one column without all the extra stuff and without using less you could do something like 'ls -l | cut -c 54-', but that seems a little excessive. It also makes the pretty colors go away.

[EvanED]

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alias ls 'ls \!* | ~/bin/natsort -f'

Sorta screws up when you pass other arguments to ls (like -lah), but optimize for the common case.

[HappySmileMan]

I use ls normally, and ls -l when I need to know the permissions/sizes/etc of stuff.

[enk]

I use raw ls. It's cool when I have less than a screenfull of stuff to be displayed anyway. If I have more, ls | less which arranges it into a single column.

If you were really desperate for the output of ls in one column without all the extra stuff and without using less you could do something like 'ls -l | cut -c 54-', but that seems a little excessive. It also makes the pretty colors go away.

You can't use cut for that, as the widths of the first columns depend on the content.

Instead of piping ls, you can use ls -1 (it's a "one"). And about the pretty colors, try ls --color=always | cat. And if you pipe it to less or an editor, you can see the terminal control codes

@EvanED: What does ls \!* do? Doesn't do anything in my bash.. or do you just have a lot of filenames beginning with "!"?
Edit: Ah..... I see someone's using zsh. But still, what is it?

[EvanED]

@EvanED: What does ls \!* do? Doesn't do anything in my bash.. or do you just have a lot of filenames beginning with "!"?
Edit: Ah..... I see someone's using zsh. But still, what is it?

csh actually. This is school account, and I haven't changed the default. (zsh isn't available there, or I would.)

It substitutes arguments. Otherwise, if I said "ls blah.txt", I'm pretty sure it would do something like "ls | natsort -f blah.txt", which isn't what I want. I want "ls blah.txt | natsort -f".

[enk]

@EvanED: What does ls \!* do? Doesn't do anything in my bash.. or do you just have a lot of filenames beginning with "!"?
Edit: Ah..... I see someone's using zsh. But still, what is it?

csh actually. This is school account, and I haven't changed the default. (zsh isn't available there, or I would.)

It substitutes arguments. Otherwise, if I said "ls blah.txt", I'm pretty sure it would do something like "ls | natsort -f blah.txt", which isn't what I want. I want "ls blah.txt | natsort -f".

So \!* is for only used in aliases? I was curious so I installed csh, and that's what it seemed like to me. But here it seems to work fine sending the arguments to ls...

Btw. natsort is nice (if it works like the natsort in php). It's built into Windows explorer too... (but on the other hand, it makes my sed scripts inserting zeroes in filenames superfluous )

[EvanED]

So \!* is for only used in aliases? I was curious so I installed csh, and that's what it seemed like to me. But here it seems to work fine sending the arguments to ls...

I think so. It doesn't work for me if I leave it out:

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9. emperor10 ~/temp: alias t 'ls | ~/bin/natsort -f'
10. ~/temp: t
1-File
2-File
10-File
file1
file2
File3
file10
File11
11. ~/temp: t file*
1-File
2-File
10-File
file1
file2
File3
file10
File11
12. ~/temp: alias t 'ls \!* | ~/bin/natsort -f'
13. ~/temp: t file*
file1
file2
file10
14. ~/temp:

(I used t as the alias for this demo because I felt like it.)

[enk]

Well, just saying since you said earlier that it screws up when you pass other arguments to ls (like -lah).

[adlaiff6]

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alias l=ls; alias ll='ls -l'

[pieaholicx]

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alias ll='ls -l'

That part I like, and do. Otherwise I just use ls. What really screws me up is when I try to use ls on Windows. It doesn't like it for some crazy reason.

[enk]

What really screws me up is when I try to use ls on Windows. It doesn't like it for some crazy reason.

I have various GNU tools on my Windows. They followed with the Ch C interpreter, but I guess Cygwin would be a more common way of getting them

[adlaiff6]

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alias ll='ls -l'

That part I like, and do. Otherwise I just use ls. What really screws me up is when I try to use ls on Windows. It doesn't like it for some crazy reason.

I also have

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alias la='ls -a'; alias lla='ls -la'

, but I use those less often.

[Pobega]

It really depends what I'm doing. If I'm looking for a file I tend to use ls piped with grep/less, but if I'm looking for permissions/ownership/date I use ls -l. It's all situational.

I'd find it weird if someone out there used ls -l for tasks that just ls can accomplish. There's no reason to clog your screen up with useless information.

[enk]

I'd find it weird if someone out there used ls -l for tasks that just ls can accomplish. There's no reason to clog your screen up with useless information.

It seems I'm the only one... If I didsn't use ls -l, I'd use ls -1 (single column) for readability, but that takes up same number of lines, so using ls -l all the time has all the other info ready for when I need it. It doesn't disturb me when I don't need it, in fact I feel sorta lonely without it. It's not useless to me.

Besides ls -l (alias: lf), I use ls -al (la), ls -ld .* (l.). And time sorting -t / -tr once in a while. If it's not a color terminal I'll throw in -F as well for any ls.

I've even made my own shell functions, that combine cd with ls.

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c() { clear ; cd $1 ; pwd -P ; echo ; ls --color=auto -l ; }
ca() { clear ; cd $1 ; pwd -P ; echo ; ls --color=auto -al ; }

It takes bash to a whole new level.

[EvanED]

One of these days I need to go through and start adding some customizations. Anther one I like is something like 'alias mk 'mkdir /!* ; cd /!*'' (untested, no clue if it should work) to make a directory and immediately cd into it. 95% of the time I make a directory that's what I do next anyway. (Vista actually does this in explorer, and it's quite nice. The above idea dates to before I knew that though. )

[enk]

One of these days I need to go through and start adding some customizations. Anther one I like is something like 'alias mk 'mkdir /!* ; cd /!*'' (untested, no clue if it should work) to make a directory and immediately cd into it. 95% of the time I make a directory that's what I do next anyway. (Vista actually does this in explorer, and it's quite nice. The above idea dates to before I knew that though. )

I use this in bash:

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mkcd() { mkdir $1 ; cd $1 ; }

[LikwidCirkel]

I hardly even use ls at all anymore when I've got the double tab listing capabilities of bash!

[zenten]

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alias ll='ls -l'

That part I like, and do. Otherwise I just use ls. What really screws me up is when I try to use ls on Windows. It doesn't like it for some crazy reason.

Just stick "dir" in a batch file called ls, and stick that in your path.

[wisnij]

I have

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alias l='ls -Fl --time-style="+%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S" --si'


in my .bashrc. It works for me.

[enk]

I hardly even use ls at all anymore when I've got the double tab listing capabilities of bash!

Now if I could only get bash to list stuff in a single column....
Vim can do it in a single row, but that's not as good


Also, if I could get bash to list file sizes in bytes and human-readable at the same time... and if would list the size of the content of folders instead.... Is this possible?
(and I want it in the same column as the file sizes - otherwise I'll use du -s */)

[zenten]

I hardly even use ls at all anymore when I've got the double tab listing capabilities of bash!

Is there any way to give the entries colours like with ls?

[LikwidCirkel]

I hardly even use ls at all anymore when I've got the double tab listing capabilities of bash!

Now if I could only get bash to list stuff in a single column....
Vim can do it in a single row, but that's not as good


Also, if I could get bash to list file sizes in bytes and human-readable at the same time... and if would list the size of the content of folders instead.... Is this possible?
(and I want it in the same column as the file sizes - otherwise I'll use du -s */)

That actually might be possible to set up!

http://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/bashref.html#Programmable-Completion

Bash uses some config stuff to call compgen, or complete, or something like that, depending on the program that you're trying to invoke. This can take options like
-A builtin
Names of shell builtin commands. May also be specified as -b.

In theory, you should be able to use an ls command with options to do autocomplete. I think you might have to specify the behavior of each program that this would work for though, but cd would be a good start.

Now you've got me fascinated, and I'll have to dig deeper.

[ToLazyToThink]

Count me in on the ls -l.

On the previous system I worked on I had ls aliased to ls -la, haven't gotten around to adding that on the new servers I'm working on.

Another common alias was lsd (ls -l | grep "^d").

_{Note: not the actual aliases used, I'd have to dig through backups to find exactly what was used, but I know it was more resilient to added options.}

[adlaiff6]

I hardly even use ls at all anymore when I've got the double tab listing capabilities of bash!

Now if I could only get bash to list stuff in a single column....
Vim can do it in a single row, but that's not as good


Also, if I could get bash to list file sizes in bytes and human-readable at the same time... and if would list the size of the content of folders instead.... Is this possible?
(and I want it in the same column as the file sizes - otherwise I'll use du -s */)

That actually might be possible to set up!

http://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/bashref.html#Programmable-Completion

Bash uses some config stuff to call compgen, or complete, or something like that, depending on the program that you're trying to invoke. This can take options like
-A builtin
Names of shell builtin commands. May also be specified as -b.

In theory, you should be able to use an ls command with options to do autocomplete. I think you might have to specify the behavior of each program that this would work for though, but cd would be a good start.

Now you've got me fascinated, and I'll have to dig deeper.

At the risk of smearing the boundaries between threads, why not just use zsh and get it all over with?

[Hurduser]

I like the multi-common output of dir /w on my FreeDOS-box and the ls on Linux-boxen without framebuffer and/or X11. If I have to suffer through normal text-modes it is advantageous not to have to scroll.

[benizi]

At the risk of smearing the boundaries between threads, why not just use zsh and get it all over with?

++ to that. It always kills me going back to bash for lack of (at least by default - maybe these are tucked away somewhere)

1. auto_cd - just tab-completing a directory name and hitting enter cd's to it.
2. simple 'for' - for l in stuff ; command - not: for l in stuff ; do command ; done - (drop the 'do' and 'done')
3. globamahol - for l in **/*foo*(.) ; process $l == process all regular files (.), in any subdirectory **/, with foo in their name. Don't want 'barfoo', though? **/*foo*~*barfoo(.)

But back to the topic at hand. I'm surprised more people don't like to sort by time. I rarely care about old files in a given directory. Here's my 'ls' alias list:

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alias l='ls --color=auto -trl'
alias ll='ls --color=auto -trlL'
alias lll='ls --color=auto -trl | less'
alias la='ls --color=auto -trlA'
alias lsd='ls --color=auto -trld'
alias lsda='ls --color=auto -trldA'
alias lss='ls --color=auto -Srl'
alias lsr='ls --color=auto -Sl'


All except the last two sort by date, with the most recent at the end.

I use 'l' the most, 'lsd' and 'la' pretty often. The ones that sort by size are mainly for when I'm looking to kill off some files hogging disk space (lss), but don't feel like using filelight, or while cleaning up my home dir (lll, lsr).

[evilbeanfiend]

mostly i use dired in emacs, which in terms of display is pretty much ls -l