Subject: Listing Files

Software Category: system
Supported by: ACS

Description:

You can view lists of all the files in any directory.

Getting Started:

The ls command lists your files alphabetically. Enter the command:

ls

and the files and subdirectories in the current, or working, directory will be listed in columns.

Documentation:

There is an on line manual page. To read it, enter the command man ls at a UNIX prompt. For general information about handling files, please refer to Memo RPI.113, Using UNIX: The Rensselaer Computing System (RCS).

Tips and Hints:

There are several ways you can use the ls command to obtain different information about your files. For example, to see all your files, including filenames that begin with a dot (.), such as .login_profile, enter ls -a To list all the files of your current directory and files of related subdirectories, enter

ls -Ra

To see the sizes of the files in blocks, enter

ls -s

Filenames that begin with a dot designate files that you don't need to work with very often. For example, .login is a file that contains settings that are applied every time you log in. You might change this file once in a while, but it isn't something you need to change often.

UNIX uses * as a wildcard character. You can use a wildcard with many types of commands to affect a group of files that share common characters in their names. For example, with ls you could list all the files that start with s by entering this command:

ls s*

As another example, you could list all the files that end in .temp by entering this:

ls *.temp

Possible Problems and Solutions:

If you use ls and no files are listed, there are no regular files in the directory. If you use ls -a and only . and .. are listed, there are no dot-files in the directory. The directory is empty.

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