Open System Services Shell and Utilities Reference Manual (G06.29+, H06.08+, J06.03+)

User Commands (k - l) ls(1)
/E,or/E/system or when recursion does not occur.
-W NOE Specifies that the /E directory should be omitted when the initial directory is root and
the recursive flag (-R) is used. This flag is ignored when the initial directory is not root
or when recursion does not occur.
Specify both the -W NOG and -W NOE flags to omit both the /G and /E directories.
The -P flag is also an HP extension.
DESCRIPTION
The ls command writes to the standard output file the contents of each specified directory or the
name of each specified file, along with any other information you ask for with flags. If you do
not specify a file or a directory, ls displays the contents of the current directory. Objects whose
names begin with a period (.) are normally not displayed except with the -a flag.
By default, the ls command displays all information in collated order by filename. The collating
sequence is determined by the LC_COLLATE environment variable.
There are three main ways to format the output:
• List entries in multiple columns by specifying either the -C or -x flag. -1 is the default
format, when output is sent to a terminal.
• List one entry per line.
• List entries in a comma-separated series by specifying the -m flag.
The ls command attempts to determine the number of byte positions in the output line. If ls can-
not get this information, it uses a default value of 80. Note that columns may not be smaller than
20 bytes or larger than 400 bytes.
Access Control Lists (ACLs)
If a file has optional ACL entries:
• The file group permission bits displayed by the ls command are the class ACL entry per-
mission bits instead of the file group ACL entry permission bits.
• The output of the command when the -l, -n, -g,or-o flags are used displays a plus (+)
sign after the permissions of the file. However, the plus (+) sign is not displayed if one of
these conditions is true:
— The ls command is executed remotely from a system that does not support OSS
ACLs.
— You use the -P flag and the file has at least one file privilege set. In this case, # is
displayed instead of +.
To list the contents of an ACL, use the getacl command.
For more information about ACLs, see the acl(5) reference page.
Environment Variables
The following environment variables affect the execution of the ls command:
LC_COLLATE
Determines the collating sequence.
LC_TIME Controls the format of the date and time.
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