list files but not directory

Mikkel L. Ellertson mikkel at infinity-ltd.com
Sat Aug 22 20:46:37 UTC 2009


Marko Vojinovic wrote:
> 
> There is just one thing that baffles me here --- isn't a directory also a file? 
> Given that, what you ask for is not an option to list only files, it is an 
> option to list everything except directories. In other words, you are asking 
> for an option that says "list the directory contents, but omit certain 
> things".
> 
> The more appropriate way to do this is to use some form of filtering. Such a 
> thing does not naturally fit into a list of options of ls, IMHO. What you 
> actually do is perform two operations here --- list the contents, and then 
> filter it to display only some subset. Two operations should be done using two 
> commands, the Unix Way. And the filtering approach gives you more flexibility 
> what file types to filter out. For example, is /dev/sda a file or a directory? 
> How would this hypothetical ls option behave in this case? List it or not?
> 
> There are not *just directories and files* on the system. There are
> *just files*. And these files might be regular files, directories, devices, 
> stdin/stdout, and who knows what else. You are proposing to add a single 
> option to ls in order to filter out one of these types. Why only this one type? 
> Put a whole bunch of options in ls which could list only regular files, or only 
> character devices, or only hidden directories or... Or better yet, don't put 
> any of that crap into ls, but pipe the ls output and filter it using a more 
> appropriate tool.
> 
> The completely analogous situation is with paging the output of ls. When I 
> first used ls on a directory with lots of files, the natural idea for me was to 
> look into its man page to find some option that would split the output into 
> several screens and display them one by one. I failed to find such an option. 
> After some digging, I found that this is done via a pipe to less:
> 
> ls | less
> 
> And then after some learning I understood that this is actually the better way 
> to do it (more powerful, more flexible, more clean, more useful). The same 
> situation is here with listing only non-directories. 
> 
> The main problem is not lack of functionality, but that Windows-converts have 
> a frame of mind that makes a distinction between "directory" and "file" 
> concepts, and believe these concepts are fundamentally different and non-
> overlapping. This is a Bad Idea, and it seems more appropriate to educate 
> users than to add options to ls which make it do things it is not designed 
> for.
> 
> Just remember: "Do one simple thing and do i well." ;-)
> 
And to carry this one step farther, you can create aliases or
function to do things you require often. For example, you could use
something like this:

function lsp() { ls $@ && less }

so that you could run lsd instead of running "ls | less".

Mikkel
-- 

  Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons,
for thou art crunchy and taste good with Ketchup!

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