Customize time format of 'ls -l'

ls -l --time-style=+"%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S"

the --time-style argument to 'ls' takes several possible modifiers: full-iso, long-iso, iso, locale, +FORMAT. The +FORMAT modifier uses the same syntax as date +FORMAT. --time-style=+"%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S" strikes a happy medium between accuracy and verbosity: ls -lart --time-style=long-iso doesn't show time down to the nearest second, ls -lart --time-style=full-iso displays time to 10E-9 second resolution, but with no significant digits past the full seconds, also showing the timezone: -rw-r--r-- 1 bchittenden bchittenden 0 2011-02-10 12:07:55.000000000 -0500 bar

Sample Output

$ ls -lart --time-style=+"%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S" demoroniser.1 bar
-rw-r--r-- 1 bchittenden bchittenden 6723 2003-09-16 08:44:30 demoroniser.1
-rw-r--r-- 1 bchittenden bchittenden    0 2011-02-10 12:07:55 bar

By: bartonski

2011-02-10 17:15:37

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What Others Think

alias ls='ls --time-style="+%b %d %Y %l:%M %p"' outputs Feb 10 2011 8:05 PM

Habitual · 713 weeks and 4 days ago

I prefer +"%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S" format because the dates will collate correctly when you do a standard unix sort... granted, ls will sort by date for you, but I'm used to displaying dates in that format for that reason.

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What do you think?

Any thoughts on this command? Does it work on your machine? Can you do the same thing with only 14 characters?

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