Linux Command Line Interface: The Basics — Part 7

7. Better listing

Adding more order with the ls -l option

Now that we have more files and directories in the ~/workspace directory, is there a way of displaying them in a more readable layout?

1. Make sure you are currently at the ~/workspace directory
2. Execute: ls -l

Exploring the -l option of the ls command

You should see something like this:

root ~/workspace $ ls -l
drwxrwxr-x 2 root root 22 Jul  3 17:47 dir1
drwxrwxr-x 2 root root 6 Jul  7 13:36 dir2
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root root 0 Jul  7 13:46 empty-file2.txt
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root root 0 Jul  1 22:12 empty-file.txt

We’ll explain the additional columns that are being displayed in further units, but for now, pay attention to the last column.

The name of the files and directories are listed vertically inside the terminal, a cleaner and more readable way of displaying the current directory contents.

7.1 Wrapping Up

So far we’ve learned 6 bash commands

We know that the command line interface, CLI for short, is also known as the terminal window or terminal for short as well.

Bash in the other hand, runs inside the terminal and is in charge of recognizing, interpreting and executing the text commands written in the prompt: