The UNIX ls command - list files  Oracle Tips by Burleson Consulting

The UNIX ls command

The UNIX ls command is one of the most frequently used UNIX commands. Without any arguments, the ls command will show us a list of all files in our current directory:

root> ls
Mailbox invalid.sql run_rpt.ksh
ad.sql kill_oracle_sessions.ksh run_trunc.lst
adamf_techeops l.ksh run_trunc.sql
admin list.lst schools.dmp
afiedt.buf list2.lst scripts
arsd.dmp lockee.txt sql
bksel.lst lst.lst sqlnet.log

When we add the –a and –l arguments, we can see all of the details for each file in out current working directory:

root> ls -al
total 928188
drwxr-xr-x 21 oracle dba 2048 Aug 22 20:47 .
drwxr-xr-x 10 root root 512 Jul 26 08:49 ..
-rw------- 1 oracle qmail 437 Aug 12 20:43 .bash_history
drwxr-xr-x 11 oracle qmail 512 Sep 3 2000 .dt
-rwxr-xr-x 1 oracle qmail 4381 Jul 16 13:20 .profile
-rwxr-xr-x 1 oracle qmail 3648 Sep 1 2000 .profile_old
-rw------- 1 oracle dba 2264 Sep 3 08:06 .sh_history
drwxr-xr-x 2 oracle dba 512 May 10 11:10 .ssh
-rw------- 1 oracle dba 3861 May 29 06:03 Mailbox
-rw-r--r-- 1 oracle dba 12632 Apr 11 16:09 ad.sql
drwxr-xr-x 2 oracle dba 512 Jan 26 2001 adamf_techeops
drwxr-xr-x 5 oracle dba 512 Sep 4 2000 admin
-rwxr-xr-x 1 oracle dba 55 Aug 22 11:56 afiedt.buf

Let’s take a look at each of the columns in the ls –al command so we understand their meaning.

Column
Data
1
file permissions
3
file owner
4
file group
5
file size
6
last modified date
7
file name

The above is an excerpt from the "Oracle9i UNIX Administration Handbook" by Oracle press, authored by Donald K. Burleson.