Tips for 'ls'

This tip demonstrates some useful variations of one of the most common commands in a linux system: ls.

Use '-s' to print the file size and '-S' to sort by file size.

Code Listing 1: Listing file by size

// add -r to print in reverse 
# ls -sSh

Use '-t' and '--time-style=long-iso' to print files sorted by modification time in a standard output format.

Code Listing 2: Listing files by date

# ls -lgot --time-style=long-iso

Use '--sort=extension' to sort files by their extension (to see perl scripts, shell scripts, etc. listed in a group).

Code Listing 3: Sorting files by extension/version

# ls -lgo --sort=extension 
 
// or sort by version 
# ls -lgo --sort=version

Note: The '-g' and '-o' options remove the owner and group columns from the output.

There are many more options, but these are just a few that may prove to be useful.

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