Chapter 8. Directory Assistance, How May I Help You?
I’ve suggested that you use the man or info command to learn more about the commands being discussed. It’s time to show you why that’s a good idea.
Remember, there’s a lot more to even the smallest commands, like ls, which lists the contents of a directory, than meets the eye. Let’s drill down a bit and find out what else “ls” can do for us other than simply telling us the file names in a directory.
ls: The Basics
The man page on “ls” tells us that the basic format of the command is:
ls [OPTION]... [FILE]... |
By default, without any options, the command produces a list of file names in alphabetical order for either the current directory or the directories (the [FILE]s in the basic format shown above) ...
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