Gnu/coreutils/General-output-formatting
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10.1.4 General output formatting
These options affect the appearance of the overall output.
- ‘
-1
’
‘--format=single-column
’ List one file per line. This is the default for
ls
when standard output is not a terminal. See also the-b
and-q
options to suppress direct output of newline characters within a file name.- ‘
-C
’
‘--format=vertical
’ List files in columns, sorted vertically. This is the default for
ls
if standard output is a terminal. It is always the default for thedir
program. GNUls
uses variable width columns to display as many files as possible in the fewest lines.- ‘
--color [=when]
’ Specify whether to use color for distinguishing file types.
when
may be omitted, or one of:- none - Do not use color at all. This is the default.
- auto - Only use color if standard output is a terminal.
- always - Always use color.
Specifying
--color
and nowhen
is equivalent to--color=always
. If piping a colorized listing through a pager likeless
, use the-R
option to pass the color codes to the terminal.Note that using the
--color
option may incur a noticeable performance penalty when run in a directory with very many entries, because the default settings require thatls
stat
every single file it lists. However, if you would like most of the file-type coloring but can live without the other coloring options (e.g., executable, orphan, sticky, other-writable, capability), usedircolors
to set theLS_COLORS
environment variable like this,eval $(dircolors -p | perl -pe \ 's/^((CAP|S[ET]|O[TR]|M|E)\w+).*/$1 00/' | dircolors -)
and on a
dirent.d_type
-capable file system,ls
will perform only onestat
call per command line argument.- ‘
-F
’
‘--classify
’
‘--indicator-style=classify
’ Append a character to each file name indicating the file type. Also, for regular files that are executable, append ‘
*
’. The file type indicators are ‘/
’ for directories, ‘@
’ for symbolic links, ‘|
’ for FIFOs, ‘=
’ for sockets, ‘>
’ for doors, and nothing for regular files. Do not follow symbolic links listed on the command line unless the--dereference-command-line
(-H
),--dereference
(-L
), or--dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir
options are specified.- ‘
--file-type
’
‘--indicator-style=file-type
’ Append a character to each file name indicating the file type. This is like
-F
, except that executables are not marked.- ‘
--hyperlink [=when]
’ Output codes recognized by some terminals to link to files using the ‘
file://
’ URI format.when
may be omitted, or one of:- none - Do not use hyperlinks at all. This is the default.
- auto - Only use hyperlinks if standard output is a terminal.
- always - Always use hyperlinks.
Specifying
--hyperlink
and nowhen
is equivalent to--hyperlink=always
.- ‘
--indicator-style=word
’ Append a character indicator with style
word
to entry names, as follows:- ‘
none
’ Do not append any character indicator; this is the default.
- ‘
slash
’ Append ‘
/
’ for directories. This is the same as the-p
option.- ‘
file-type
’ Append ‘
/
’ for directories, ‘@
’ for symbolic links, ‘|
’ for FIFOs, ‘=
’ for sockets, and nothing for regular files. This is the same as the--file-type
option.- ‘
classify
’ Append ‘
*
’ for executable regular files, otherwise behave as for ‘file-type
’. This is the same as the-F
or--classify
option.
- ‘
- ‘
-k
’
‘--kibibytes
’ Set the default block size to its normal value of 1024 bytes, overriding any contrary specification in environment variables (see Block size). If
--block-size
,-h
,--human-readable
, or--si
options are used, they take precedence over-k
or--kibibytes
even if-k
or--kibibytes
is placed after the other options.The
-k
or--kibibytes
option affects the per-directory block count written by the-l
and similar options, and the size written by the-s
or--size
option. It does not affect the file size written by-l
.- ‘
-m
’
‘--format=commas
’ List files horizontally, with as many as will fit on each line, separated by ‘
,
’ (a comma and a space).- ‘
-p
’
‘--indicator-style=slash
’ Append a ‘
/
’ to directory names.- ‘
-x
’
‘--format=across
’
‘--format=horizontal
’ List the files in columns, sorted horizontally.
- ‘
-T cols
’
‘--tabsize=cols
’ Assume that each tab stop is
cols
columns wide. The default is 8.ls
uses tabs where possible in the output, for efficiency. Ifcols
is zero, do not use tabs at all.Some terminal emulators might not properly align columns to the right of a TAB following a non-ASCII byte. You can avoid that issue by using the
-T0
option or putTABSIZE=0
in your environment, to tellls
to align using spaces, not tabs.- ‘
-w cols
’
‘--width=cols
’ Assume the screen is
cols
columns wide. The default is taken from the terminal settings if possible; otherwise the environment variableCOLUMNS
is used if it is set; otherwise the default is 80. With acols
value of ‘0
’, there is no limit on the length of the output line, and that single output line will be delimited with spaces, not tabs.
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