List files in the current working directory. Type the ls command to list the contents of the current working directory.
List files in another directory. Type the ls [directory path here] command to list the contents of another directory.
List files in the root directory. Type the ls / command to list the contents of the root directory.
List files in the parent directory. Type the ls .. command to list the contents of the parent directory one level above. Use ls ../.. for contents two levels above.
List files in the user's home directory (/home/user). Type the ls ~ command to list the contents in the users's home directory.
List only directories. Type the ls -d */ command to list only directories.
List files with subdirectories. Type the ls * command to list the contents of the directory with it's subdirectories.
List files recursively. Type the ls -R command to list all files and directories with their corresponding subdirectories down to the last file.
List files with their sizes. Type the ls -s command (the s is lowercase) to list files or directories with their sizes.
List files in long format. Type the ls -l command to list the contents of the directory in a table format with columns including content permissions, number of links to the content, owner of the content, group owner of the content, size of the content in bytes, last modified date / time of the content and file or directory name.
List files in long format with readable file sizes. Type the ls -lh command to list the files or directories in the same table format above, but with another column representing the size of each file/directory. Note that sizes are listed in bytes (B), megabytes (MB), gigabytes (GB), or terabytes (TB) when the file or directory's size is larger than 1024 bytes.
List files including hidden files. Type the ls -a command to list files or directories including hidden files or directories. In Linux, anything that begins with a . is considered a hidden file.
List files in long format including hidden files. Type the ls -l-a or ls -a -l or ls -la or ls -al command to list files or directories in a table format with extra information including hidden files or directories.
List files and sort by date and time. Type the ls -t command to list files or directories and sort by last modified date in descending order (biggest to smallest). You can also add a -r flag to reverse the sorting order like so: ls -tr .
List files and sort by file size. Type the ls -S (the S is uppercase) command to list files or directories and sort by size in descending order (biggest to smallest). You can also add a -r flag to reverse the sorting order like so: ls -Sr .
List files and output the result to a file. Type the ls > output.txt command to print the output of the preceding command into an output.txt file. You can use any of the flags discussed before like -la — the key point here is that the result will be outputted into a file and not logged to the command line. Then you can use the file as you see fit, or log the contents of the file with cat output.txt .
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