When ls invoked without any arguments, lists the files in
the current working directory. A directory that is not the current working
directory can be specified and ls will list the files there. The user also may
specify any list of files and directories. In this case, all files and all
contents of specified directories will be listed.
Files whose names start with "." are not
listed, unless the -a flag is specified or the files are specified explicitly.
Without options, ls displays files in a bare format. This
bare format however makes it difficult to establish the type, permissions, and
size of the files. The most common options to reveal this information or change
the list of files are:
-l long format,
displaying Unix file type, permissions, number of hard links, owner, group, size, date, and filename
-F appends a
character revealing the nature of a file, for example, * for an executable, or /
for a directory. Regular files have no suffix.
-a lists all files in the given directory,
including those whose names start with "." By default, these files
are excluded from the list.
-R recursively lists subdirectories. The command
ls -R / would therefore list all files.
$ ls
$ ls -a
$ ls -laF ~/public