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ls command is one of the most commonly used tools in Unix. You simply cannot underestimate the importance of being able to confirm exactly what files and directories are available to you, and ls does its job perfectly.
ls - basic syntax
The most basic way to use this command is to simply make it list files and directories in your current directory. You don't need to specify any parameters for it, just type the command itself:
$ ls
ls - most common usage
If you're interested in a particular file or directory, you should specify the filename as a parameter to ls.
This command will simply output the filename of the file you have specified:
$ ls /etc/passwd /etc/passwd
Similarly, it's possible to confirm that a certain file is not found:
$ ls /etc/passwd5 ls: /etc/passwd5: No such file or directory
You may also specify a directory (the output in this example is abridged) to confirm the contents of it:
base-3.00$ ls /etc Muttrc Net X11 adduser.conf adjtime aliases aliases.db alternatives apache2 apm apt at.deny …
And finally, the most common way ls is used: the long version of the output, which is invoked using the -l parameter:
base-3.00$ ls -l /etc total 1064 -rw-r–r– 1 root root 8063 Mar 8 2007 Muttrc -rw-r–r– 1 root root 611 Mar 5 2007 Net drwxr-xr-x 5 root root 4096 Sep 7 04:44 X11 -rw-r–r– 1 root root 2077 Aug 3 2006 adduser.conf -rw-r–r– 1 root root 44 Aug 3 2006 adjtime -rw-r–r– 1 root root 51 Mar 25 2007 aliases -rw-r–r– 1 root root 12288 Sep 7 05:01 aliases.db drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Sep 7 05:03 alternatives drwxr-xr-x 8 root root 4096 Sep 26 03:02 apache2 drwxr-xr-x 6 root root 4096 Aug 3 2006 apm drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 Sep 7 04:34 apt -rw-r—– 1 root root 144 Aug 3 2006 at.deny
Such output allows you to confirm the type of each directory entry, the access permissions, the number of links to this file, the ownership (user and unix group which own it), size in bytes, date of the last modification, and, finally, the name of the directory entry.
7 comments ↓
[...] And if I want to verify that rpm really is the owner of some file from this list, I can use the ls command: [...]
[...] you notice, the /tmp/file.2 has an "l" in the long-format output of the ls command, which confirms it's a symbolic link. You also can see right away where this symlink points [...]
[...] It's very easy to confirm who the owner of a file is, and you can do it using the ls command. [...]
[...] you can probably tell from the error message, the problem is directory permissions. If we use the ls command to verify access permissions, we can see that in my example the /tmp/protected directory belongs to [...]
[...] listing files, the most obvious choice is a Unix ls command, and the way you use it to list symlink is the same way you'd list any other [...]
[...] there is even a special counter for such references. When you're using the long format of an ls command, you can see this [...]
[...] The simplest way to confirm the times associated with a file is to use ls command. [...]
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