Commands using ls (517)


  • 1
    find / -perm +6000 -type f -exec ls -ld {} \;
    aguslr · 2011-10-14 22:19:58 5
  • This will list the files in a directory, then zip each one with the original filename individually. video1.wmv -> video1.zip video2.wmv -> video2.zip This was for zipping up large amounts of video files for upload on a Windows machine.


    1
    ls -1 | awk ' { print "zip "$1".zip " $1 } ' | sh
    kaywhydub · 2011-12-14 20:30:56 6

  • 1
    ls -d $PWD/*
    putnamhill · 2011-12-16 19:12:55 3

  • 1
    ls -d1 $PWD/{.*,*}
    bunam · 2011-12-17 12:25:15 2

  • 1
    ls -d1 $PWD/*
    www · 2011-12-31 14:46:41 3

  • 1
    find <directory> -type f -printf "%T@\t%p\n"|sort -n|cut -f2|xargs ls -lrt
    rik · 2012-03-02 12:51:06 3
  • Here's an annotated version of the command, using full-names instead of aliases. It is exactly equivalent to the short-hand version. # Recursively list all the files in the current directory. Get-ChildItem -Recurse | # Filter out the sub-directories themselves. Where-Object { return -not $_.PsIsContainer; } | # Group the resulting files by their extensions. Group-Object Extension | # Pluck the Name and Count properties of each group and define # a custom expression that calculates the average of the sizes # of the files in that group. # The back-tick is a line-continuation character. Select-Object ` Name, Count, @{ Name = 'Average'; Expression = { # Average the Length (sizes) of the files in the current group. return ($_.Group | Measure-Object -Average Length).Average; } } | # Format the results in a tabular view, automatically adjusted to # widths of the values in the columns. Format-Table -AutoSize ` @{ # Rename the Name property to something more sensible. Name = 'Extension'; Expression = { return $_.Name; } }, Count, @{ # Format the Average property to display KB instead of bytes # and use a formatting string to show it rounded to two decimals. Name = 'Average Size (KB)'; # The "1KB" is a built-in constant which is equal to 1024. Expression = { return $_.Average / 1KB }; FormatString = '{0:N2}' } Show Sample Output


    1
    ls -r | ?{-not $_.psiscontainer} | group extension | select name, count, @{n='average'; e={($_.group | measure -a length).average}} | ft -a @{n='Extension'; e={$_.name}}, count, @{n='Average Size (KB)'; e={$_.average/1kb}; f='{0:N2}'}
    brianpeiris · 2012-03-13 17:58:10 9
  • This will generate the same output without changing the current directory, and filepath will be relative to the current directory. Note: it will (still) fail if your iTunes library is in a non-standard location.


    1
    ls "~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media/Mobile Applications" > filepath
    minnmass · 2012-05-04 09:51:59 50
  • Nothing too magical here, just uses pngcrush to losslessly compress all your pngs!


    1
    ls *.png | while read line; do pngcrush -brute $line compressed/$line; done
    waffleboi9 · 2012-07-17 20:20:49 5
  • Sometimes I would like to see hidden files, prefix with a period, but some files or folders I never want to see (and really wish I could just remove all together). Show Sample Output


    1
    alias ls='if [[ -f .hidden ]]; then while read l; do opts+=(--hide="$l"); done < .hidden; fi; ls --color=auto "${opts[@]}"'
    expelledboy · 2012-08-12 13:10:23 5

  • 1
    ln -s /base/* /target && ls -l /target
    mattcen · 2012-08-22 11:27:40 5
  • Show the UUID-based alternate device names of ZEVO-related partitions on Darwin/OS X. Adapted from the lines by dbrady at http://zevo.getgreenbytes.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=700#p700 and following the disk device naming scheme at http://zevo.getgreenbytes.com/wiki/pmwiki.php?n=Site.DiskDeviceNames Show Sample Output


    1
    ls /dev/disk* | xargs -n 1 -t sudo zdb -l | grep GPTE_
    grahamperrin · 2012-10-06 20:19:45 5
  • Substitute for #11720 Can probably be even shorter and easier. Show Sample Output


    1
    ls -l /dev/disk/by-id/ | grep '/sda$' | grep -o 'ata[^ ]*'
    michelsberg · 2013-01-16 17:28:11 7
  • I find it useful, when cleaning up deleting unwanted files to make more space, to list in size order so I can delete the largest first. Note that using "q" shows files with non-printing characters in name. In this sample output (above), I found two copies of the same iso file both of which are immediate "delete candidates" for me. Show Sample Output


    1
    ls -qahlSr # list all files in size order - largest last
    mpb · 2013-03-13 09:52:07 29
  • zsh: list of files sorted by size, greater than 100mb, head the top 5. '**/*' is recursive, and the glob qualifiers provide '.' = regular file, 'L' size, which is followed by 'm' = 'megabyte', and finally '+100' = a value of 100


    1
    ls -Sh **/*(.Lm+100) | tail -5
    khayyam · 2013-03-21 20:22:11 4
  • make usable on OSX with filenames containing spaces. note: will still break if filenames contain newlines... possible, but who does that?!


    1
    svn ls -R | egrep -v -e "\/$" | tr '\n' '\0' | xargs -0 svn blame | awk '{print $2}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr
    rymo · 2013-04-10 19:37:53 5
  • Like top, but for files


    1
    watch -d -n 2 'df; ls -FlAt;'
    G2G · 2013-09-17 05:44:47 6
  • Sorts by latest modified files by looking to current directory and all subdirectories Show Sample Output


    1
    find . -name '*pdf*' -print0 | xargs -0 ls -lt | head -20
    fuats · 2013-10-03 21:58:51 9
  • displays a list of all file extensions in current directory and how many files there are of each type of extension in ascending order (case insensitive) Show Sample Output


    1
    ls | tr [:upper:] [:lower:] | grep -oP '\.[^\.]+$' | sort | uniq -c | sort
    icefyre · 2014-01-30 11:37:27 10

  • 1
    npm ls -g|grep "^[&#9500;&#9492;]\(.\+\)\?[&#9516;&#9472;] "
    lucasmezencio · 2014-02-03 21:50:39 7
  • Very quick! Based only on the content sizes and the character counts of filenames. If both numbers are equal then two (or more) directories seem to be most likely identical. if in doubt apply: diff -rq path_to_dir1 path_to_dir2 AWK function taken from here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2912224/find-duplicates-lines-based-on-some-delimited-fileds-on-line Show Sample Output


    1
    find . -type d| while read i; do echo $(ls -1 "$i"|wc -m) $(du -s "$i"); done|sort -s -n -k1,1 -k2,2 |awk -F'[ \t]+' '{ idx=$1$2; if (array[idx] == 1) {print} else if (array[idx]) {print array[idx]; print; array[idx]=1} else {array[idx]=$0}}'
    knoppix5 · 2014-02-25 22:50:09 27
  • Tested with GNU and BSD ls. Show Sample Output


    1
    ls -la | grep ^l
    gatopan · 2014-08-11 03:06:48 8
  • With this version, you can list all symlinks in the current directory (no subdirectories), and have it list both the link and the target. Show Sample Output


    1
    ls -l `find ~ -maxdepth 1 -type l -print`
    skittleys · 2015-01-04 02:36:47 7
  • list all txt files order by time, newest first


    1
    ls -lt --time=atime *.txt
    miccaman · 2015-05-21 21:03:44 10
  • Adding course name prefix to lecture pdfs Show Sample Output


    1
    ls *.pdf | while read file; do newfile="CS749__${file}"; mv "${file}" "${newfile}"; done;
    programmer · 2016-04-19 11:04:47 16
  • ‹ First  < 6 7 8 9 10 >  Last ›

What's this?

commandlinefu.com is the place to record those command-line gems that you return to again and again. That way others can gain from your CLI wisdom and you from theirs too. All commands can be commented on, discussed and voted up or down.

Share Your Commands


Check These Out

Convert a bunch of HTML files from ISO-8859-1 to UTF-8 file encoding in a folder and all sub-folders
This is my first attempt at converting all HTML files to UTF-8 file encoding, including all subfolders. Theres probably a much more compact way to do it, but I'm quite proud of it with my windows background ;)

Ping all hosts on 192.168.1.0/24
-b option takes the broadcast address.

Lines per second in a log file
Another way of counting the line output of tail over 10s not requiring pv. Cut to have the average per second rate : tail -n0 -f access.log>/tmp/tmp.log & sleep 10; kill $! ; wc -l /tmp/tmp.log | cut -c-2 You can also enclose it in a loop and send stderr to /dev/null : while true; do tail -n0 -f access.log>/tmp/tmp.log & sleep 2; kill $! ; wc -l /tmp/tmp.log | cut -c-2; done 2>/dev/null

Which processes are listening on a specific port (e.g. port 80)
swap out "80" for your port of interest. Can use port number or named ports e.g. "http"

display typedefs, structs, unions and functions provided by a header file
will display typedefs, structs, unions and functions declared in 'stdio.h'(checkout _IO_FILE structure). It will be helpful if we want to know what a particular header file will offer to us. Command 'cpp' is GNU's C Preprocessor.

Transform a portrait pdf in a landscape one with 2 pages per page
This is an example of the usage of pdfnup (you can find it in the 'pdfjam' package). With this command you can save ink/toner and paper (and thus trees!) when you print a pdf. This tools are very configurable, and you can make also 2x2, 3x2, 2x3 layouts, and more (the limit is your fantasy and the resolution of the printer :-) You must have installed pdfjam, pdflatex, and the LaTeX pdfpages package in your box.

Produce a pseudo random password with given length in base 64

Merge several pdf files into a single file
merge a.pdf b.pdf and c.pdf and create ./out.pdf

Watch Star Wars via telnet
Use Ctrl-] to stop it.

Port Knocking!
Knock on ports to open a port to a service (ssh for example) and knock again to close the port. You have to install knockd. See example config file below. [options] logfile = /var/log/knockd.log [openSSH] sequence = 3000,4000,5000 seq_timeout = 5 command = /sbin/iptables -A INPUT -i eth0 -s %IP% -p tcp --dport 22 -j ACCEPT tcpflags = syn [closeSSH] sequence = 5000,4000,3000 seq_timeout = 5 command = /sbin/iptables -D INPUT -i eth0 -s %IP% -p tcp --dport 22 -j ACCEPT tcpflags = syn


Stay in the loop…

Follow the Tweets.

Every new command is wrapped in a tweet and posted to Twitter. Following the stream is a great way of staying abreast of the latest commands. For the more discerning, there are Twitter accounts for commands that get a minimum of 3 and 10 votes - that way only the great commands get tweeted.

» http://twitter.com/commandlinefu
» http://twitter.com/commandlinefu3
» http://twitter.com/commandlinefu10

Subscribe to the feeds.

Use your favourite RSS aggregator to stay in touch with the latest commands. There are feeds mirroring the 3 Twitter streams as well as for virtually every other subset (users, tags, functions,…):

Subscribe to the feed for: