Mac OS X Tiger in a Nutshell

Name

ls

Synopsis

ls [options] [names]

List contents of directories. If no names are given, list the files in the current directory. With one or more names, list files contained in a directory name or that match a file name. names can include filename metacharacters. The options let you display a variety of information in different formats. The most useful options include -F, -R, -l, and -s. Some options don’t make sense together (e.g., -u and -c).

Options

-1

Print one entry per line of output.

-a

List all files, including the normally hidden files whose names begin with a period.

-A

List all files, including the normally hidden files whose names begin with a period. Don’t include the . and .. directories.

-b

Print nonprintable characters with their C-style escape codes, such as \n for line feed and \t for tab. Characters without an escape code print with their octal values, such as \xxx.

-B

Print nonprintable characters with their octal codes, such as \xxx.

-c

List files by status change time (not creation/modification time).

-C

List files in columns (the default format).

-d

Report only on the directory, not its contents.

-e

Print the ACL for the file, if present.

-f

Print directory contents in exactly the order in which they are stored, without attempting to sort them.

-F

Flag filenames by appending / to directories, * to executable files, @ to symbolic links, | to FIFOs, = to sockets, and % to whiteouts.

-G

Enable colorized output.

-h

List sizes from the -l option with units: bytes, ...