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ls

This command provides information about the contents and permissions of

files within the file system. The bare command ls will list the files in the

current directory. In addition to the many options that can be used with this

command, the last element on the command line can be a file or directory

specification. Wild cards are appropriate here, so ls m* will list all files in

the current directory that begin with m. There are many options that can be

used with the ls command. A few of the more useful are:

 l

display listing in the  long  format, giving file type, per 

missions, the number of hard links, owner and group

name, byte size, and the time stamp, by default the mod 

ification time.

 a

display all files, including those that start with the `.'

character.

 R

give a recursive listing of the contents of all sub 

directories.

color code files according to file type.

 S

sort by file size.

 r

reverse the order of whatever sort has been chosen.

Example:

ls  l /dev/l 

brw rw     1 root cdrom 24, 0 Jan 17 09:45 /dev/lmscd

srw rw rw  1 root root , 0 Jun 8 23:49 /dev/log

brw rw     1 root disk 7, 0 Sep 23 1996 /dev/loop0

brw rw     1 root disk 7, 1 Sep 23 1996 /dev/loop1

brw rw     1 root disk 7, 2 Sep 23 1996 /dev/loop2

brw rw     1 root disk 7, 3 Sep 23 1996 /dev/loop3