Ls - Sample Usage

Sample Usage

The following example demonstrates the output of the ls command given two different arguments:

$ pwd /home/fred $ ls -l drwxr--r-- 1 fred editors 4096 drafts -rw-r--r-- 1 fred editors 30405 edition-32 -r-xr-xr-x 1 fred fred 8460 edit $ ls -F drafts/ edition-32 edit*(x)

In this example, the user fred has a directory named drafts, a regular file called edition-32, and an executable named edit in his home directory. ls uses unix file permission notation to indicate which users or groups are allowed to access each file or directory.

drwxr--r-- 1 fred editors 4096 Mar 1 2007 drafts

This means that the letters behind the file descriptor (d), which indicates a folder or 'directory', list three characters to indicate permissions for the current user (rwx), then the group to which the file belongs (r--), and the rights of others (r--).

'drafts' is a directory (d), the user has the right to read (r) write (w) and execute (x): rwx, group members have (r--), meaning read only, and others have (r--), meaning read only access. See unix file permission notation for a more detailed description.