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Directories and files

Listing more information about files

So far, you have seen how to list the names of files, and how to see whether files are directories, programs, or regular files. You can use the -l (long) option to the ls command to see more information:

   $ ls -l -L /etc
   total 4566
   -rwx------   1 bin      bin        10510 Mar 16  1993 aiolkinit
   -rw-rw-r--   1 root     mem           48 Jun 17 08:34 arp_data
   -rwx------   2 bin      bin         2966 Mar 15  1993 asktime
   -rwx------   2 bin      bin         2966 Mar 15  1993 asktimerc
   drwxrwx--x   4 auth     auth          80 Mar 24  1993 auth
   -r-x------   1 bin      auth        1706 Mar 15  1993 authckrc
   -rwx--x--x   1 root     root      128266 Mar 12  1993 automount
   -rw-r--r--   1 root     root           0 Jun 17 08:34 advtab
   ...
l is another way of saying ls -l. A long listing shows you, from left to right, the file type, the permissions on the file, the number of links to the file, the owner of the file, the group of the file, the size of the file in bytes, the date and time the file was last modified, and the name of the file. If a file has not been modified since last year, the year appears instead of the modification time.

What you see in a long listing

Most of this information is discussed in more detail in ``Protecting files and directories''.

Try doing a long listing of the files in your home directory:

  1. Type cd and press <Enter> to go to your home directory.

  2. Type l and press <Enter> to see a long listing of the files.

Q: What if I list a directory and there are so many files that the files at the beginning of the list run off the top of the screen before I have a chance to read them?

A: You can use <Ctrl>S and <Ctrl>Q to stop and start scrolling output. When you press <Ctrl>S, the screen stops scrolling. If you now press <Ctrl>Q again, the screen resumes scrolling.


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