Command question

[Socrates440]

I am reading a linux text book which has been great so far (http://rute.2038bug.com/node5.html.gz). However, some of the commands that it has been giving me have not been working as described in the book. For example, the book gave me the commands to change directories which have been working but it told me that to view all of the files in a directory I should type in:

ls -l

However, when I typed it in (just after installing adobe flash and in other directories), rather than a list of files I got messages like this:

@localhost Downloads]$ ls -l
total 8
-rw-rw-r--. 1 rootless rootless 4368 May 25 21:29 adobe-release-i386-1.0-1.noarch.rpm



What is it that ls -l does and how do I list the files in a directory?

Thanks!

[stevea]

Originally Posted by Socrates440

@localhost Downloads]$ ls -l
total 8
-rw-rw-r--. 1 rootless rootless 4368 May 25 21:29 adobe-release-i386-1.0-1.noarch.rpm

The current directory uses 8 blocks (mostly ignorable).
There is one (non-hidden) file in the directory ,named " adobe-release-i386-1.0-1.noarch.rpm"
That file has rw permissions for user-id "rootless",
has rw permission for group-ig "rootless",
has r permission for everyone else.
The file has 4368 bytes and was last modified on May 25 21:29.

What is it that ls -l does and how do I list the files in a directory?

Thanks!

You've got the right tool 'ls' tho 'dir' can do something similar. Try the
man ls
command for more info.

[Gareth Jones]

"ls" on its own will list the names of the files in the current directory.

"ls -l" will list them one-per-line, along with a summary of associate meta-data (ownership, permissions, size, etc. as stevea interpreted above).

In general, if you need more information about a specific command, "man command_name" will show the command's manual page. "command --help" (or "-h", "-?" options) gives a briefer summary for most commands. The "info" command often has more detailed documentation than "man", but isn't as straightforward to use.

[tashirosgt]

Originally Posted by stevea

Try the
man ls
command for more info.

And, Socrates440, it wouldn't be a real computer question if you could get a the answers simply by reading the documentation. The behavior of the "ls" command in a typical Linux distribution is often slightly changed by the fact that it is "aliased" to a slightly different command.

For example, on my FC 16, installation , I can use the command

alias

and get the output

alias egrep='egrep --color=auto'
alias fgrep='fgrep --color=auto'
alias grep='grep --color=auto'
alias l.='ls -d .* --color=auto'
alias ll='ls -l --color=auto'
alias ls='ls --color=auto'
alias vi='vim'
alias which='alias | /usr/bin/which --tty-only --read-alias --show-dot --show-tilde'

This explains the color choices of the "ls" command on my machine - or I should say it doesn't explain them to me since I don't know what "auto" does or what configures that.

To get into the details of how aliasing of commands is done would be a digression. I just wanted to let you know that the behavior of a command may vary slightly from its "man" page.

...and after all, if anybody and his brother could figure out computers, what would be the point in messing with them?

[sdlor]

Try:

@localhost Downloads]$ ls -la

(to show the hidden files, also)

[Gareth Jones]

Originally Posted by tashirosgt

This explains the color choices of the "ls" command on my machine - or I should say it doesn't explain them to me since I don't know what "auto" does or what configures that.

The "color=auto" option is to avoid terminal escape sequences (which change the colour of text in the terminal) from being written to files or pipes. ls checks to see if its output is a terminal or not. If its output is a terminal, colour terminal escape sequences are used, otherwise colour is not used and only plain text is output.

[Socrates440]

Thanks for all of the info everybody

[george_toolan]

The next thing you're going to need is the pwd command ;-)

pwd - print name of current/working directory