ls Command: 15 Examples for Everyday Linux

ls is the command you type more than any other. It lists what is in a directory, and with the right flags it answers most "what is actually here?" questions in one line.

Everyday listing #

List files in the current directory

$ ls
apt-keys  data  public  src  wrangler.jsonc

Plain ls prints names in columns. That hides more than it shows, so most people settle on a longer form:

The long listing everyone ends up using

$ ls -lh
-rw-r--r--  1 ana ana 117K Oct 20 02:10 sample.py
drwxr-xr-x  8 ana ana  256 Oct 11 16:03 src

Reading one line left to right: permissions, number of hard links, owner, group, size in a human unit, last modification date, and the name.

The flags that matter #

Flag	What it does
`-l`	Long format with permissions, owner, size, date
`-a`	Include hidden dotfiles such as `.gitignore`
`-h`	Human-readable sizes (K, M, G) with `-l`
`-t`	Sort by modification time, newest first
`-S`	Sort by size, largest first
`-r`	Reverse the sort order
`-d`	List the directory itself, not its contents
`-R`	Recurse into subdirectories

Useful combinations #

Newest changes first — the fastest way to find the file you just edited:

Show the most recently modified files

$ ls -lht | head

Everything, including dotfiles, sorted by size:

Find the biggest entries, hidden ones included

$ ls -lhaS | head

Does that directory exist, and what kind of entry is it?

Inspect a directory without entering it

$ ls -ld /etc/nginx
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Oct  1 09:12 /etc/nginx

Listing is step one. To search inside files rather than list them, reach for grep. More practical notes live in the journal.