ls Power Flags

Beyond -lah

You already know the long-all-human combo. Here's what else ls can do without reaching for find.

Sorting

• -t — by modification time. Newest first.
• -tr — newest at the bottom. Pairs perfectly with tail: ls -tr | tail = the most recently changed.
• -S — by size, biggest first. ls -lhS | head is your "what's eating my disk" one-liner.
• -X (GNU) — by extension

Display

• -1 — one entry per line. Pipe-friendly.
• -F — append / to dirs, * to executables, @ to symlinks.
• -d — list directories themselves, not their contents. ls -d */ = just the subdirectory names.
• -i — show inode numbers (for hard-link spotting).
• -G (BSD) / --color=auto (GNU) — colorize.

Hidden vs almost-all

-a includes . (current dir) and .. (parent dir). Most days you want -A instead — every dotfile except those two.

Time precision

Default ls -l shows year for old files and time for recent. ls -l --time-style=full-iso (GNU) gives ISO-8601 timestamps. On macOS BSD ls, use ls -lT for a fully expanded timestamp.