How to get a list of file names in different lines

Question

I want to get a list of all the files in a directory, like with ls, so that each filename will be on a seperate line, without the extra details supplied by ls -l. I looked at ls --help and didn't find a solution. I tried doing

ls -l | cut --fields=9 -d" "

but ls doesn't use a fixed number of spaces between columns. Any idea on how to do this, preferably in one line?

score 265 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 01 '11 at 14:22

265

ls -1

That is a number, not small L.

answered Mar 01 '11 at 14:22

Šimon Tóth

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i see this in the documentation: cross -x, commas -m, horizontal -x, long -l, single-column -1, verbose -l, vertical -C i'm not sure how they came up with some of these. – Alexander Taylor Oct 21 '15 at 22:50

score 23 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 01 '11 at 14:24

23

ls -1. From the help:

-1 list one file per line

Works on cygwin and FreeBSD, so it's probably not too GNU-specific.

answered Mar 01 '11 at 14:24

jhwist

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Works on Ubuntu as well. Thanks – Yonatan Simson May 26 '16 at 09:34

rene · Answer 3 · 2015-03-04T14:25:46.357

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solution without pipe-ing :-)

 ls --format single-column

Note that the long options are only supported on the GNU coreutils where BSD ls only supports the short arguments -1

edited Mar 04 '15 at 14:25

answered Mar 01 '11 at 14:22

rene

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score 6 · Answer 4 · answered Mar 01 '11 at 14:19

6

Perhaps:

ls | awk '{print $NF}'

answered Mar 01 '11 at 14:19

Eelvex

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note: a file name with spaces such as "apples and pears.jpg" will turn into "pears.jpg" – oknate Mar 23 '17 at 12:37

score 5 · Answer 5 · answered Mar 01 '11 at 14:20

5

ls | cat ... or possibly, ls -1

answered Mar 01 '11 at 14:20

Johan Kotlinski

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Please do avoid the useless use of cat :) – jhwist Mar 01 '11 at 14:25
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`cat` is not useless in this instance. It formats the output of `ls` in one column as OP asks for. – Felix Eve Oct 29 '15 at 04:44

score 3 · Answer 6 · edited Sep 29 '12 at 12:35

3

Use sed command to list single columns

ls -l | sed 's/\(^[^0-9].\*[0-9]\*:[0-9]\*\) \(.*\)/\2/'

edited Sep 29 '12 at 12:35

nhahtdh

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answered Sep 29 '12 at 11:34

vara

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`ls -l` produces the same output as your whole answer. Not sure what `sed` is adding here... – Felix Eve Oct 29 '15 at 04:48

score 3 · Answer 7 · edited Nov 22 '15 at 00:14

3

Try this:

$ ls | xargs -n num

Here num is number of columns you want to list in.

edited Nov 22 '15 at 00:14

Sam Protsenko

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answered Nov 21 '15 at 14:23

honeytechiebee

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score 1 · Answer 8 · answered Sep 29 '12 at 13:43

1

first you can use this. it will display the one file per line.

ls -l | sed 's/(.* )(.*)$/\2/'

or else you can use thus

find . -maxdepth 1 | sed 's/.///'

both the things are the same.

answered Sep 29 '12 at 13:43

Manikandan Rajendran

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I get the error `sed: -e expression #1, char 16: invalid reference \2 on \`s' command's RHS` – Felix Eve Oct 29 '15 at 04:46

score 0 · Answer 9 · answered Jan 17 '17 at 12:18

0

This will also do

ls -l | awk '{print $NF}'

answered Jan 17 '17 at 12:18

Vicky

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How is this practically any different from Eelvex's [answer](http://stackoverflow.com/a/5155730/369450)? – All Workers Are Essential Jan 17 '17 at 16:14

Anshul Ayushya · Answer 10 · 2018-06-05T11:21:49.430

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This is also working: echo -e "\n$(ls)"

edited Jun 05 '18 at 11:21

answered Jun 05 '18 at 11:13

Anshul Ayushya

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How to get a list of file names in different lines

10 Answers10