Advanced Use of ls in Linux

List Files Sorted by Time¶

You can list files sorted by time (newest first) using the -t option. Notice that the -t option is also support by hdfs dfs -ls.

ls -lht

Ignore Files¶

1. You have to either enclose the pattern in quotes or escape the wildcard in patterns.

2. Equivalent commands to ignore JSON files.

    ls --ignore=*.json
    ls -I*.json
    ls -I \*.json
    ls -I '*.json' # quote needed due to the space!
    find . ! -iname '*.json'

3. Ignore multiple patterns.

    ls -I '*.txt' -I '*.pdf'
    find . ! -iname '*.json' ! -iname '*.pdf'
    find . -type f -name "*.txt" ! -path "./Movies/*" ! -path "./Downloads/*" ! -path "./Music/*"

4. Ignore backup files (whose names end with ~).

    ls -B

   Or you can use

    ls --ignore=*~

List Contents of a Directory with the Directory Name Prefixed¶

When you list the contents of a directory (e.g., raw) using the following command.

ls raw

the directory name raw is not prefixed to the returned/printed contents. You can of course concatenate the directory name raw to each of its subdirectory/subfile manually, however, a more convenient way is to use the the following command.

ls raw/*

List Only Subdirectories¶

You can use the following command to list directories only in the current directory.

ls -d ./*

List Hidden Files and Directories¶

ls -d .*