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🏷️ NAME

ls – list directory contents

🚀 Quick Reference

Use Case	Command	Description
📂 Show all files, including hidden	ls -a	Do not hide entries starting with .
📋 Long listing with details	ls -l	Permissions, size, date, etc.
📏 Human‑readable sizes	ls -lh	Sizes shown as 1K, 234M, 2G…
⏱️ Sort by time, newest first	ls -lt	Show latest files at top
🔃 Recursive subdirectory listing	ls -R	List everything below current dir
📦 Sort by file size (largest first)	ls -lS	Identify disk‑hungry files
🎨 Colorised output (terminal)	ls --color=auto	Distinguish file types by colour
🚫 One file per line	ls -1	Simple listing, no special chars

📜 SYNOPSIS

ls [OPTION]... [FILE]...

📖 DESCRIPTION

List information about the FILEs (the current directory by default). Sort entries alphabetically if none of -cftuvSUX nor --sort is specified.

Mandatory arguments to long options are mandatory for short options too.

🔹 -a, --all

📂 do not ignore entries starting with .

🔹 -A, --almost-all

📁 do not list implied . and ..

🔹 --author

✍️ with -l, print the author of each file

🔹 -b, --escape

🖨️ print C‑style escapes for nongraphic characters

🔹 --block-size=SIZE

📏 with -l, scale sizes by SIZE when printing them; e.g., --block-size=M; see SIZE format below

🔹 -B, --ignore-backups

🗑️ do not list implied entries ending with ~

🔹 -c

⏰ with -lt: sort by, and show, ctime (time of last modification of file status information); with -l: show ctime and sort by name; otherwise: sort by ctime, newest first

🔹 -C

📊 list entries by columns

🔹 --color[=WHEN]

🎨 colorize the output; WHEN can be always (default if omitted), auto, or never; more info below

🔹 -d, --directory

📁 list directories themselves, not their contents

🔹 -D, --dired

🧩 generate output designed for Emacs' dired mode

🔹 -f

⚡ do not sort, enable -aU, disable -ls --color

🔹 -F, --classify

🏷️ append indicator (one of */=>@|) to entries

🔹 --file-type

🏷️ likewise, except do not append *

🔹 --format=WORD

📐 across -x, commas -m, horizontal -x, long -l, single‑column -1, verbose -l, vertical -C

🔹 --full-time

⏱️ like -l --time-style=full-iso

🔹 -g

👥 like -l, but do not list owner

🔹 --group-directories-first

📂🗂️ group directories before files; can be augmented with a --sort option, but any use of --sort=none (-U) disables grouping

🔹 -G, --no-group

👥🚫 in a long listing, don't print group names

🔹 -h, --human-readable

📏 with -l and -s, print sizes like 1K 234M 2G etc.

🔹 --si

📐 likewise, but use powers of 1000 not 1024

🔹 -H, --dereference-command-line

🔗 follow symbolic links listed on the command line

🔹 --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir

🔗📁 follow each command line symbolic link that points to a directory

🔹 --hide=PATTERN

🙈 do not list implied entries matching shell PATTERN (overridden by -a or -A)

🔹 --hyperlink[=WHEN]

🔗 hyperlink file names; WHEN can be always (default if omitted), auto, or never

🔹 --indicator-style=WORD

🏷️ append indicator with style WORD to entry names: none (default), slash (-p), file-type (--file-type), classify (-F)

🔹 -i, --inode

🔢 print the index number of each file

🔹 -I, --ignore=PATTERN

🙈 do not list implied entries matching shell PATTERN

🔹 -k, --kibibytes

💾 default to 1024‑byte blocks for disk usage; used only with -s and per directory totals

🔹 -l

📋 use a long listing format

🔹 -L, --dereference

🔗 when showing file information for a symbolic link, show information for the file the link references rather than for the link itself

🔹 -m

, fill width with a comma separated list of entries

🔹 -n, --numeric-uid-gid

🔢 like -l, but list numeric user and group IDs

🔹 -N, --literal

📛 print entry names without quoting

🔹 -o

👤 like -l, but do not list group information

🔹 -p, --indicator-style=slash

/ append / indicator to directories

🔹 -q, --hide-control-chars

? print ? instead of nongraphic characters

🔹 --show-control-chars

🖥️ show nongraphic characters as‑is (the default, unless program is ls and output is a terminal)

🔹 -Q, --quote-name

„ “ enclose entry names in double quotes

🔹 --quoting-style=WORD

🏷️ use quoting style WORD for entry names: literal, locale, shell, shell-always, shell-escape, shell-escape-always, c, escape (overrides QUOTING_STYLE environment variable)

🔹 -r, --reverse

↕️ reverse order while sorting

🔹 -R, --recursive

🔁 list subdirectories recursively

🔹 -s, --size

💾 print the allocated size of each file, in blocks

🔹 -S

📦 sort by file size, largest first

🔹 --sort=WORD

🔀 sort by WORD instead of name: none (-U), size (-S), time (-t), version (-v), extension (-X)

🔹 --time=WORD

⏲️ change the default of using modification times; access time (-u): atime, access, use; change time (-c): ctime, status; birth time: birth, creation; with -l, WORD determines which time to show; with --sort=time, sort by WORD (newest first)

🔹 --time-style=TIME_STYLE

🕰️ time/date format with -l; see TIME_STYLE below

🔹 -t

⏱️ sort by time, newest first; see --time

🔹 -T, --tabsize=COLS

↹ assume tab stops at each COLS instead of 8

🔹 -u

🕒 with -lt: sort by, and show, access time; with -l: show access time and sort by name; otherwise: sort by access time, newest first

🔹 -U

🔀 do not sort; list entries in directory order

🔹 -v

🔢 natural sort of (version) numbers within text

🔹 -w, --width=COLS

📏 set output width to COLS. 0 means no limit

🔹 -x

↔️ list entries by lines instead of by columns

🔹 -X

📎 sort alphabetically by entry extension

🔹 -Z, --context

🛡️ print any security context of each file

🔹 -1

📄 list one file per line. Avoid '\n' with -q or -b

🔹 --help

❓ display this help and exit

🔹 --version

ℹ️ output version information and exit

The SIZE argument is an integer and optional unit (example: 10K is 10*1024). Units are K,M,G,T,P,E,Z,Y (powers of 1024) or KB,MB,… (powers of 1000). Binary prefixes can be used, too: KiB=K, MiB=M, and so on.

The TIME_STYLE argument can be full-iso, long-iso, iso, locale, or +FORMAT. FORMAT is interpreted like in date(1). If FORMAT is FORMAT1<newline>FORMAT2, then FORMAT1 applies to non‑recent files and FORMAT2 to recent files. TIME_STYLE prefixed with posix- takes effect only outside the POSIX locale. Also the TIME_STYLE environment variable sets the default style to use.

Using color to distinguish file types is disabled both by default and with --color=never. With --color=auto, ls emits color codes only when standard output is connected to a terminal. The LS_COLORS environment variable can change the settings. Use the dircolors command to set it.

🚪 Exit Codes

• 0 – ✅ if OK
• 1 – ⚠️ if minor problems (e.g., cannot access subdirectory)
• 2 – ❌ if serious trouble (e.g., cannot access command‑line argument)

✍️ AUTHOR

Written by Richard M. Stallman and David MacKenzie.

🐞 REPORTING BUGS

GNU coreutils online help: <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/>
Report any translation bugs to <https://translationproject.org/team/>

©️ COPYRIGHT

Copyright © 2020 Free Software Foundation, Inc. License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it. There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

🔗 SEE ALSO

Full documentation <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/ls>
or available locally via: info '(coreutils) ls invocation'

🏷️ NAME 🚀 Quick Reference 📜 SYNOPSIS 📖 DESCRIPTION 🚪 Exit Codes ✍️ AUTHOR 🐞 REPORTING BUGS ©️ COPYRIGHT 🔗 SEE ALSO