ls — List file and directory names and attributes

ls displays at least the file name; you can request more information with the following options:

–A

Lists all entries including those starting with periods (.); but excluding any . or .. entries.

–a

Lists all entries including those starting with a period (.).

–b

Displays nonprintable characters as octal bytes with the form \ooo.

–C

Puts output into columns, sorted vertically; this is the default output format to the terminal.

–c

Uses the time of the last change of the file's attributes for sorting (–t) or displaying (–l).

–D

Displays from directories.

–d

Does not display the contents of named directories, but information about the directories themselves.

–E

Displays extended attributes for regular files:

a

Program runs APF-authorized if linked AC=1

p

Program is considered program-controlled

s

Program is enabled to run in a shared address space

l

Program is loaded from the shared library region

—

Attribute not set

See Long output format.

–F

Puts a / after each directory name, a * after every executable file, a | after every FIFO file, a @ after every symbolic link, and a = after every socket. It also puts an & character after an external link name.

–f

Forces the pathname argument to be a directory; turns off sorting. ls gives the ordered list of file names in a directory file. The directory file is read and the file names are listed in the same order as they are returned. The contents of a directory file are shown.

–g

Same as –l except that it does not display owner.

–g turns on the Long Output Format. See Long output format for details.

–H

Displays file formats for regular files:

––––

Not specified

bin

Binary data

rec

Record. (File data consists of records with prefixes. The record prefix contains the length of the record that follows. From the shell command perspective, files with this format will be treated as if they were binary files.)

Or the following text data delimiters:

nl

Newline character

cr

Carriage return

lf

Line feed

crlf

Carriage return followed by line feed

lfcr

Line feed followed by carriage return

crnl

Carriage return followed by new line

–H turns on the Long Output Format. See Long output format for details.

–i

Displays file serial (inode) numbers along with file names.

–k

Uses 1024 bytes for block size.

–L

Follows symbolic links.

–l

Displays permissions, links, owner, group, size, time, name. See Long output format for details.

–M

Displays the security label of the file, as in this example:

> ls -M  has_seclabel no_seclabel
SECLABEL	has_seclabel
         	no_seclabel

ls –M does not turn on the –l option. ls –M can be used with other options. See Long output format for details.

–m

Displays names in a single line, with commas separating names.

–n

Displays UID number and GID number.

–o

Same as –l except that it does not display group.

–o turns on the long output format. See Long output format for details.

–p

Puts / after directory names.

–q

Displays nonprintable characters as ?.

–R

Lists subdirectories recursively.

–r

Sorts in reverse of typical order; you can combine this with other options that sort the list.

–s

Displays size in blocks, after the file serial (inode) number, but before other information. The block size is 512 bytes unless the –k option is used.

–T

Displays file tag information associated with the file. The format of this output will be similar to the output from chtag –p.

An example output:

> ls -T file
t   IBM-1047     T=on   file1 

ls –T does not turn on the –l option. ls –T can be used with other options. See Long output format for details.

–t

Sorts by time. By default, this option sorts the output by the modification times of files. You can change this with the –c and –u options.

–u

Uses the last access time for sorting (–t) or displaying (–l) .

–W

Enables the audit bits to be displayed. This option turns on the –l option.

These bits are printed in a 6-character field directly after the field displaying the file permission bits. These 6 characters are really two groups of 3 bits each. The first group of 3 describes the user-requested audit information. The second group of 3 describes the auditor-requested audit information. Each 3 characters displayed are the read, write, and execute (or search) audit options. Each character indicates the audit option as:

s (Audit successful audit attempts)
f (Audit failed access attempts)
a (Audit all accesses)
– (No audit)

–W turns on the long output format. See Long output format for details.

–x

Puts output into sorted columns, with output going across the rows.

–1

Forces output to be one entry per line.

The output from ls –l summarizes the most important information about the file on a single line. If the specified pathname is a directory, ls displays information about every file in that directory (one file per line). It precedes this list with a status line that indicates the total number of file system blocks occupied by files in the directory (in 512-byte chunks or 1024-bytes if –k option is used). Following is a sample of the output along with an explanation:

total 11
drwxr-xr-x       3 ROOT   SYS1    0 Mar 12 19:32 tmp
drwxrwxrwx       4 ROOT   SYS1    0 Mar 12 19:32 usr
drwxr-xr-x       2 ROOT   SYS1    0 Mar 12 19:32 bin
-rwxr--r--       1 ROOT   SYS1  572 Mar 12 19:32 foo
-rwxr--r--       1 ROOT   SYS1  640 Mar 12 19:33 abc

The next 9 characters are in three groups of 3; they describe the permissions on the file. The first group of 3 describes owner permissions; the second describes group permissions; the third describes other (or “world”) permissions. Characters that might appear are:

r

Permission to read the file

w

Permission to write on the file

x

Permission to execute the file

The following characters appear only in the execute permission (x) position of the output.

S

Same as s, except that the execute bit is turned off.

s

If in owner permissions section, the set-user-ID bit is on; if in group permissions section, the set-group-ID bit is on.

T

Same as t, except that the execute bit is turned off.

t

The sticky bit is on.

The following character appears after the permissions if the file contains extended ACL entries:

+

For example:

ls -l file
-rwxrwxrw-+       WELLIE         SYS 167 Jan 11 09:54 file

After the permissions are set, ls displays the following (using the preceding example), in order:

• The number of links to the file.
• The name of the owner of the file or directory.
• The name of the group that owns the file or directory.
• The size of the file, expressed in bytes. For character special files, it displays the major and minor device types.
• For a file, the date and time the file was last changed; for a directory, when it was created. The –c and –u options can change which time value is used. If the date is more than 6 months old or if the date is in the future, the year is shown instead of the time.
• The name of the file or directory.

If ls –E is issued, an additional four characters follow the original 10 characters:

total 11
-rwxr-xr-x  -ps-   1 ROOT   SYS1  101 Mar 12 19:32 her
-rwxrwxrwx  a-s-   1 ROOT   SYS1  654 Mar 12 19:32 test
-rwxr-xr-x  a--    1 ROOT   SYS1   40 Mar 12 19:32 temp
-rwxr--r--  ap-l   1 ROOT   SYS1  572 Mar 12 19:32 foo
-rwxr--r--  --sl   1 ROOT   SYS1  640 Mar 12 19:33 abc

If ls –H is issued, an additional four characters follow the original 10 characters:

total 32
-rwxr-xr-x   ----   1 ROOT   SYS1     0 Mar 26 08:47 tmp
drwxr-xr-x          2 ROOT   SYS1  8192 Mar 26 08:50 usr
-rwxr--r--   cr     1 ROOT   SYS1    40 Mar 26 08:55 abc
-rwxr-x---   rec    1 ROOT   SYS1    80 Dec 26 09:55 newfmt

If ls –E is used in conjunction with –H, then the four characters will follow the four characters that are normally associated with ls –E:

ls -EH
-rwxr-xr-x  ap-l bin   1 ROOT   SYS1   101 Mar 12 19:21 foo 

If ls –W is issued, an additional 6 characters, in two groups of 3, follow the original 10 characters. The first group of 3 describes the user-requested audit information; the second group describes auditor-requested audit information.

total 11
drwxr-xr-x  fff---     3 ROOT   SYS1    0 Mar 12 19:32 tmp
drwxrwxrwx  fff---     4 ROOT   SYS1    0 Mar 12 19:32 usr
drwxr-xr-x  fff---     2 ROOT   SYS1    0 Mar 12 19:32 bin
-rwxr--r--  fff---     1 ROOT   SYS1  572 Mar 12 19:32 foo
-rwxr--r--  fff---     1 ROOT   SYS1  640 Mar 12 19:33 abc

ls uses the following environment variables:

COLUMNS

Contains the terminal width in columns. ls uses this value to determine the number of output columns to write using the –C option.

TZ

Contains the time zone to be used when displaying date and time strings.

Possible error messages include:

File or directory name is not found

The requested file or directory does not exist.

Cannot allocate memory for sorting

To sort its output, ls needs to allocate memory; this message says that there was not enough memory for the sorting operation.

Too many directory entries in dir

This message appears only when ls runs out of dynamically allocated memory.