The complete parameter list for the ls command.

There are lots of parameters for the ls command that can come in handy as you do file management. If you use the man command for ls, you’ll see several pages of available parameters for you to use to modify the output of the ls command.

root@dell:~# ls -sail /etc |less
418076 8 -rw-r–r– 1 root root 4623 May 5 2009 Muttrc
493130 4 drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jul 6 2009 Muttrc.d
416980 4 drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Sep 27 2008 NetworkManager
500697 4 drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Apr 7 2009 ODBCDataSources
416981 4 drwxr-xr-x 13 root root 4096 Dec 8 19:19 X11
416982 4 drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 Sep 1 2007 Xprint
417381 4 -rw-r–r– 1 root root 2563 Jan 3 2008 a2ps-site.cfg
417382 16 -rw-r–r– 1 root root 15064 Jan 3 2008 a2ps.cfg
416983 4 drwxr-xr-x 9 root root 4096 Sep 27 2008 acpi

A common combination to use is the -a parameter to list all files, the -i parameter to list the inode for each file, the -l parameter to produce a long listing, and the -s parameter to list the block size of the files. The inode of a file or directory is a unique identification number the kernel assigns to each object in the filesystem. Combining all of these parameters creates the easy-to-remember -sail parameter.

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