ls(1)
NAME
ls - list contents of directory
SYNOPSIS
/usr/bin/ls [-aAbcCdfFghilLmnopqrRstux1@] [file...]
/usr/xpg4/bin/ls [-aAbcCdfFghilLmnopqrRstux1@] [file...]
DESCRIPTION
For each file that is a directory, ls lists the contents of
the directory. For each file that is an ordinary file, ls
repeats its name and any other information requested. The
output is sorted alphabetically by default. When no argument
is given, the current directory is listed. When several
arguments are given, the arguments are first sorted
appropriately, but file arguments appear before directories
and their contents.
There are three major listing formats. The default format
for output directed to a terminal is multi-column with
entries sorted down the columns. The -1 option allows single
column output and -m enables stream output format. In order
to determine output formats for the -C, -x, and -m options,
ls uses an environment variable, COLUMNS, to determine the
number of character positions available on one output line.
If this variable is not set, the terminfo(4) database is
used to determine the number of columns, based on the
environment variable, TERM. If this information cannot be
obtained, 80 columns are assumed.
The mode printed under the -l option consists of ten charac-
ters. The first character may be one of the following:
d The entry is a directory.
D The entry is a door.
l The entry is a symbolic link.
b The entry is a block special file.
c The entry is a character special file.
p The entry is a FIFO (or "named pipe") special file.
s The entry is an AF_UNIX address family socket.
- The entry is an ordinary file.
The next 9 characters are interpreted as three sets of three
bits each. The first set refers to the owner's permissions;
the next to permissions of others in the user-group of the
file; and the last to all others. Within each set, the three
characters indicate permission to read, to write, and to
execute the file as a program, respectively. For a direc-
tory, ``execute'' permission is interpreted to mean permis-
sion to search the directory for a specified file. The char-
acter after permissions is ACL indication. A plus sign is
displayed if there is an ACL associated with the file. Noth-
ing is displayed if there are just permissions.
ls -l (the long list) prints its output as follows for the
POSIX locale:
-rwxrwxrwx+ 1 smith dev 10876 May 16 9:42 part2
Reading from right to left, you see that the current direc-
tory holds one file, named part2. Next, the last time that
file's contents were modified was 9:42 A.M. on May 16. The
file contains 10,876 characters, or bytes. The owner of the
file, or the user, belongs to the group dev (perhaps indi-
cating ``development''), and his or her login name is smith.
The number, in this case 1, indicates the number of links to
file part2 (see cp(1)). The plus sign indicates that there
is an ACL associated with the file. Note: If the -@ option
has been specified, the presence of extended attributes will
supersede the presence of an ACL and the plus sign will be
replaced with an 'at' sign (@). Finally, the dash and
letters tell you that user, group, and others have permis-
sions to read, write, and execute part2.
The execute (x) symbol here occupies the third position of
the three-character sequence. A - in the third position
would have indicated a denial of execution permissions.
The permissions are indicated as follows:
r The file is readable.
w The file is writable.
x The file is executable.
- The indicated permission is not granted.
s The set-user-ID or set-group-ID bit is on, and the
corresponding user or group execution bit is also on.
S Undefined bit-state (the set-user-ID bit is on and the
user execution bit is off).
t The 1000 (octal) bit, or sticky bit, is on (see
chmod(1)), and execution is on.
T The 1000 bit is turned on, and execution is off (unde-
fined bit-state).
/usr/bin/ls
l Mandatory locking occurs during access (the set-
group-ID bit is on and the group execution bit is
off).
/usr/xpg4/bin/ls
L Mandatory locking occurs during access (the set-
group-ID bit is on and the group execution bit is
off).
For user and group permissions, the third position is some-
times occupied by a character other than x or -. s also may
occupy this position, referring to the state of the set-ID
bit, whether it be the user's or the group's. The ability to
assume the same ID as the user during execution is, for
example, used during login when you begin as root but need
to assume the identity of the user you login as.
In the case of the sequence of group permissions, l may
occupy the third position. l refers to mandatory file and
record locking. This permission describes a file's ability
to allow other files to lock its reading or writing permis-
sions during access.
For others permissions, the third position may be occupied
by t or T. These refer to the state of the sticky bit and
execution permissions.
OPTIONS
The following options are supported:
-a Lists all entries, including those that begin with a
dot (.), which are normally not listed.
-A Lists all entries, including those that begin with a
dot (.), with the exception of the working directory
(.) and the parent directory (..).
-b Forces printing of non-printable characters to be in
the octal \ddd notation.
-c Uses time of last modification of the i-node (file
created, mode changed, and so forth) for sorting (-t)
or printing (-l or -n).
-C Multi-column output with entries sorted down the
columns. This is the default output format.
-d If an argument is a directory, lists only its name
(not its contents). Often used with -l to get the
status of a directory.
-f Forces each argument to be interpreted as a directory
and list the name found in each slot. This option
turns off -l, -t, -s, and -r, and turns on -a. The
order is the order in which entries appear in the
directory.
-F Marks directories with a trailing slash (/), doors
with a trailing greater-than sign (>), executable
files with a trailing asterisk (*), FIFOs with a
trailing vertical bar (|), symbolic links with a
trailing 'at' sign (@), and AF_UNIX address family
sockets with a trailing equals sign (=).
-g The same as -l, except that the owner is not printed.
-h All sizes are scaled to a human readable format, for
example, 14K, 234M, 2.7G, or 3.0T. Scaling is done by
repetitively dividing by 1024.
-i For each file, prints the i-node number in the first
column of the report.
-l Lists in long format, giving mode, ACL indication,
number of links, owner, group, size in bytes, and time
of last modification for each file (see above). If the
file is a special file, the size field instead con-
tains the major and minor device numbers. If the time
of last modification is greater than six months ago,
it is shown in the format `month date year' for the
POSIX locale. When the LC_TIME locale category is not
set to the POSIX locale, a different format of the
time field may be used. Files modified within six
months show `month date time'. If the file is a sym-
bolic link, the filename is printed followed by "->"
and the path name of the referenced file.
-L If an argument is a symbolic link, lists the file or
directory the link references rather than the link
itself.
-m Streams output format. Files are listed across the
page, separated by commas.
-n The same as -l, except that the owner's UID and
group's GID numbers are printed, rather than the asso-
ciated character strings.
-o The same as -l, except that the group is not printed.
-p Puts a slash (/) after each filename if the file is a
directory.
-q Forces printing of non-printable characters in file
names as the character question mark (?).
-r Reverses the order of sort to get reverse alphabetic
or oldest first as appropriate.
-R Recursively lists subdirectories encountered.
-s Gives size in blocks, including indirect blocks, for
each entry.
-t Sorts by time stamp (latest first) instead of by name.
The default is the last modification time. (See -u and
-c.)
-u Uses time of last access instead of last modification
for sorting (with the -t option) or printing (with the
-l option).
-@ The same as -l, except that extended attribute infor-
mation will supersede ACL information. An @ is
displayed after the file permission bits for files
that have extended attributes.
-x Multi-column output with entries sorted across rather
than down the page.
-1 Prints one entry per line of output.
/usr/bin/ls
Specifying more than one of the options in the following
mutually exclusive pairs is not considered an error: -C and
-l (ell), -m and -l (ell), -x and -l (ell), -@ and -l (ell).
The -l option overrides the other option specified in each
pair.
/usr/xpg4/bin/ls
Specifying more than one of the options in the following
mutually exclusive pairs is not considered an error: -C and
-l (ell), -m and -l (ell), -x and -l (ell), -@ and -l (ell).
The last option specified in each pair determines the output
format.
OPERANDS
The following operand is supported:
file A path name of a file to be written. If the file
specified is not found, a diagnostic message will be
output on standard error.
USAGE
See largefile(5) for the description of the behavior of ls
when encountering files greater than or equal to 2 Gbyte ( 2
**31 bytes).
EXAMPLES
Example 1: File permissions
An example of a file's permissions is:
-rwxr--r--
This describes a file that is readable, writable, and exe-
cutable by the user and readable by the group and others.
Another example of a file's permissions is:
-rwsr-xr-x
This describes a file that is readable, writable, and exe-
cutable by the user, readable and executable by the group
and others, and allows its user-ID to be assumed, during
execution, by the user presently executing it.
Another example of a file's permissions is:
-rw-rwl---
This describes a file that is readable and writable only by
the user and the group and can be locked during access.
Example 2: Printing the names of all files
This command prints the names of all files in the current
directory, including those that begin with a dot (.), which
normally do not print:
example% ls -a
Example 3: Providing file information
Another example of a command line is:
example% ls -aisn
This command provides information on all files, including
those that begin with a dot (a), the i-number-the memory
address of the i-node associated with the file-printed in
the left-hand column (i); the size (in blocks) of the files,
printed in the column to the right of the i-numbers (s);
finally, the report is displayed in the numeric version of
the long list, printing the UID (instead of user name) and
GID (instead of group name) numbers associated with the
files.
When the sizes of the files in a directory are listed, a
total count of blocks, including indirect blocks, is
printed.
ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
See environ(5) for descriptions of the following environment
variables that affect the execution of ls: LANG, LC_ALL,
LC_COLLATE, LC_CTYPE, LC_TIME, LC_MESSAGES, NLSPATH, and TZ.
COLUMNS
Determines the user's preferred column position width
for writing multiple text-column output. If this vari-
able contains a string representing a decimal integer,
the ls utility calculates how many path name text
columns to write (see -C) based on the width provided.
If COLUMNS is not set or is invalid, 80 is used. The
column width chosen to write the names of files in any
given directory will be constant. File names will not
be truncated to fit into the multiple text-column out-
put.
EXIT STATUS
0 All information was written successfully.
>0 An error occurred.
FILES
/etc/group
group IDs for ls -l and ls -g
/etc/passwd
user IDs for ls -l and ls -o
/usr/share/lib/terminfo/?/*
terminal information database
ATTRIBUTES
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attri-
butes:
/usr/bin/ls
____________________________________________________________
| ATTRIBUTE TYPE | ATTRIBUTE VALUE |
|_____________________________|_____________________________|
| Availability | SUNWcsu |
|_____________________________|_____________________________|
| CSI | Enabled |
|_____________________________|_____________________________|
| Interface Stability | Stable |
|_____________________________|_____________________________|
/usr/xpg4/bin/ls
____________________________________________________________
| ATTRIBUTE TYPE | ATTRIBUTE VALUE |
|_____________________________|_____________________________|
| Availability | SUNWxcu4 |
|_____________________________|_____________________________|
| CSI | Enabled |
|_____________________________|_____________________________|
| Interface Stability | Standard |
|_____________________________|_____________________________|
SEE ALSO
chmod(1), cp(1), setfacl(1), terminfo(4), attributes(5),
environ(5), fsattr(5), largefile(5), standards(5)
NOTES
Unprintable characters in file names may confuse the colum-
nar output options.
The total block count will be incorrect if there are hard
links among the files.
The sort order of ls output is affected by the locale and
can be overridden by the LC_COLLATE environment variable.
For example, if LC_COLLATE equals C, dot files appear first,
followed by names beginning with upper-case letters, then
followed by names beginning with lower-case letters. But if
LC_COLLATE equals en_US.ISO8859-1, then leading dots as well
as case are ignored in determining the sort order.
Man(1) output converted with
man2html