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LS(1) General Commands Manual LS(1)

ls — list directory contents

ls [-1ABCFGHILPRSTW_abcdfghiklmnopqrstuwxy] [-D format] [file ...]

For each operand that names a file of a type other than directory, ls displays its name as well as any requested, associated information. For each operand that names a file of type directory, ls displays the names of files contained within that directory, as well as any requested, associated information.

If no operands are given, the contents of the current directory are displayed. If more than one operand is given, non-directory operands are displayed first; directory and non-directory operands are sorted separately and in lexicographical order.

The following options are available:

List all entries, including dot files, except for dot and dot-dot. Always set for the super-user, but may be turned off with -I.
Force printing of non-printable characters (as defined by ctype(3) and current locale settings) in file names as \xxx, where xxx is the numeric value of the character in octal.
Force multi-column output; this is the default when output is to a terminal.
format
When printing in the long (-l) format, use format to format the date and time output. The argument format is a string used by strftime(3). Depending on the choice of format string, this may result in a different number of columns in the output. This option overrides the -T option.
Display a slash (‘/’) immediately after each pathname that is a directory, an asterisk (‘*’) after each that is executable, an at sign (‘@’) after each symbolic link, an equals sign (‘=’) after each socket, a percent sign (‘%’) after each whiteout, and a vertical bar (‘|’) after each that is a FIFO.
Enable colorized output. This option is equivalent to defining CLICOLOR in the environment. (See below.) This functionality can be compiled out by removing the definition of COLORLS.
Symbolic links on the command line are followed. This option is assumed if none of the -F, -d, or -l options are specified.
This turns off the listing of dot files. Dot files are listed by default when ls is run as root. Note that the -I and -A options will override each other.
If argument is a symbolic link, list the file or directory the link references rather than the link itself. This option cancels the -P option.
If argument is a symbolic link, list the link itself rather than the object the link references. This option cancels the -H and -L options.
Recursively list subdirectories encountered.
Sort by size (largest file first) before sorting the operands in lexicographical order.
When used with the -l (lowercase letter “ell”) option, display complete time information for the file, including month, day, hour, minute, second, and year (named locales use the ISO 8601 extended format).
Display whiteouts when scanning directories.
Include directory entries whose names begin with a dot (.).
As -B, but use C escape codes whenever possible.
Use time when file status was last changed for sorting or printing.
Directories are listed as plain files (not searched recursively).
Output is not sorted. This option implies -a.
This option is deprecated and is only available for compatibility with 4.3BSD; it was used to display the group name in the long (-l) format output.
When used with the -l option, use unit suffixes: Byte, Kilobyte, Megabyte, Gigabyte, Terabyte and Petabyte in order to reduce the number of digits to four or fewer using base 2 for sizes.
For each file, print the file's file serial number (inode number).
If the -s option is specified, print the file size allocation in kilobytes, not blocks. This option overrides the environment variable BLOCKSIZE. Note that -k is mutually exclusive to -h, and later -k will nullify earlier -h.
(The lowercase letter “ell”.) List in long format. (See below.) A total sum (in blocks, see the -s option for the block size unit) for all the file sizes is output on a line before the long listing.
Stream output format; list files across the page, separated by commas.
Display user and group IDs numerically rather than converting to a user or group name in a long (-l) output.
Include the file flags in a long (-l) output.
Write a slash (‘/’) after each filename if that file is a directory.
Force printing of non-graphic characters in file names as the character ‘?’; this is the default when output is to a terminal.
Reverse the order of the sort to get reverse lexicographical order or the oldest entries first.
Display the number of file system blocks actually used by each file, in units of 512 bytes, where partial units are rounded up to the next integer value. A total sum for all the file sizes is output on a line before the listing. The environment variable BLOCKSIZE overrides the unit size of 512 bytes.
Sort by time modified (most recently modified first) before sorting the operands by lexicographical order.
Use time of last access, instead of last modification of the file for sorting (-t) or printing (-l).
Force raw printing of non-printable characters. This is the default when output is not to a terminal.
The same as -C, except that the multi-column output is produced with entries sorted across, rather than down, the columns.
Include the FSMID field in a long (-l) output.
(The numeric digit “one”.) Force output to be one entry per line. This is the default when output is not to a terminal.
(underscore) When printing in the long (-l) format, use GMT based date and time output with nanotime timestamp.

The -1, -C, -x, and -l options all override each other; the last one specified determines the format used.

The -c and -u options override each other; the last one specified determines the file time used.

The -S and -t options override each other; the last one specified determines the sort order used.

The -B, -b, -w, and -q options all override each other; the last one specified determines the format used for non-printable characters.

The -H, -L and -P options all override each other (either partially or fully); they are applied in the order specified.

By default, ls lists one entry per line to standard output; the exceptions are to terminals or when the -C or -x options are specified.

File information is displayed with one or more ⟨blank⟩s separating the information associated with the -i, -s, and -l options.

If the -l option is given, the following information is displayed for each file: file mode, number of links, owner name, group name, number of bytes in the file, last modified time in either per POSIX requirements or using the format DD-MMM-YYYY hh:ss, and the pathname. In addition, for each directory whose contents are displayed, the total number of 512-byte blocks used by the files in the directory is displayed on a line by itself immediately before the information for the files in the directory.

In the POSIX locale, If the modification time of the file is in the future, or more than 6 months in the past, then the year of the last modification is displayed in place of the hour and minute fields.

If the owner or group names are not a known user or group name, or the -n option is given, the numeric ID's are displayed.

If the file is a character special or block special file, the major and minor device numbers for the file are displayed in the size field. If the file is a symbolic link the pathname of the linked-to file is preceded by “->”.

The file mode printed under the -l option consists of the entry type and the permissions. The entry type character describes the type of file, as follows:

Block special file.
Character special file.
Directory.
Symbolic link.
Socket link.
FIFO.
-
Regular file.

The next three fields are three characters each: owner permissions, group permissions, and other permissions. Each field has three character positions:

  1. If r, the file is readable; if -, it is not readable.
  2. If w, the file is writable; if -, it is not writable.
  3. The first of the following that applies:
    If in the owner permissions, the file is not executable and set-user-ID mode is set. If in the group permissions, the file is not executable and set-group-ID mode is set.
    If in the owner permissions, the file is executable and set-user-ID mode is set. If in the group permissions, the file is executable and setgroup-ID mode is set.
    The file is executable or the directory is searchable.
    -
    The file is neither readable, writable, executable, nor set-user-ID nor set-group-ID mode, nor sticky. (See below.)

    These next two apply only to the third character in the last group (other permissions).

    The sticky bit is set (mode 1000), but not execute or search permission. (See chmod(1) or sticky(8).)
    The sticky bit is set (mode 1000), and is searchable or executable. (See chmod(1) or sticky(8).)

The following environment variables affect the execution of ls:

If the environment variable BLOCKSIZE is set, the block counts (see -s) will be displayed in units of that size block.
Use ANSI color sequences to distinguish file types. See LSCOLORS below. In addition to the file types mentioned in the -F option some extra attributes (setuid bit set, etc.) are also displayed. The colorization is dependent on a terminal type with the proper termcap(5) capabilities. The default “cons25” console has the proper capabilities, but to display the colors in an xterm(1), for example, the TERM variable must be set to “xterm-color”. Other terminal types may require similar adjustments. Colorization is silently disabled if the output is not directed to a terminal unless the CLICOLOR_FORCE variable is defined.
Color sequences are normally disabled if the output is not directed to a terminal. This can be overridden by setting this variable. The TERM variable still needs to reference a color capable terminal however otherwise it is not possible to determine which color sequences to use.
If this variable contains a string representing a decimal integer, it is used as the column position width for displaying multiple-text-column output. The ls utility calculates how many pathname text columns to display based on the width provided. (See -C and -x.)
The locale to use when determining the order of day and month in the long -l format output. See environ(7) for more information.
The value of this variable describes what color to use for which attribute when colors are enabled with CLICOLOR. This string is a concatenation of pairs of the format fb, where f is the foreground color and b is the background color.

The color designators are as follows:

black
red
green
brown
blue
magenta
cyan
light grey
bold black, usually shows up as dark grey
bold red
bold green
bold brown, usually shows up as yellow
bold blue
bold magenta
bold cyan
bold light grey; looks like bright white
default foreground or background

Note that the above are standard ANSI colors. The actual display may differ depending on the color capabilities of the terminal in use.

The order of the attributes are as follows:

  1. directory
  2. symbolic link
  3. socket
  4. pipe
  5. executable
  6. block special
  7. character special
  8. executable with setuid bit set
  9. executable with setgid bit set
  10. directory writable to others, with sticky bit
  11. directory writable to others, without sticky bit

The default is "exfxcxdxbxegedabagacad", i.e., blue foreground and default background for regular directories, black foreground and red background for setuid executables, etc.

If this variable is set, it is considered to be a colon-delimited list of minimum column widths. Unreasonable and insufficient widths are ignored (thus zero signifies a dynamically sized column). Not all columns have changeable widths. The fields are, in order: inode, block count, number of links, user name, group name, flags, file size, file name.
The CLICOLOR functionality depends on a terminal type with color capabilities.
The timezone to use when displaying dates. See environ(7) for more information.

The group field is now automatically included in the long listing for files in order to be compatible with the IEEE Std 1003.2 (“POSIX.2”) specification.

chflags(1), chmod(1), sort(1), xterm(1) (x11/xterm), strftime(3), termcap(5), symlink(7), sticky(8)

With the exception of options -g, -n and -o, the ls utility conforms to IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 (“POSIX.1”). The options -B, -D, -G, -I, -T, -W, -b, -h, -w, -y and -_ are compatible extensions not defined in IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 (“POSIX.1”).

An ls command appeared in Version 1 AT&T UNIX.

To maintain backward compatibility, the relationships between the many options are quite complex.

December 26, 2017 DragonFly-5.6.1