getting around with commands on linux: ls

ls

ls -lh

which will print out file size in human readable sizes

ls -a

does not hide files which begin with a .

ls -l /lib/libc*

goes through and just displays /lib/libc* matches

timestamps

ls -ld

shows the directories without descending into them and listing the files contained therein

ls -lt

sorts by timestamp allowing a visual diff of new files and old, allowing piping into another program and separating files according to time.

the '-t' causes a sort

ls -l

last modification timestamp

ls -lu

last access timestamp

ls -lc

information about the file has changed, but not the file itself

ls -ls and ls -la: why the different totals?? what is the total reflecting?

[root@www sessions]# ls -ls
total 12
   4 -rw-------    1 joe      mail           24 Mar  9 07:21 joe-session-0.0109632721441848
   4 -rw-------    1 joe      mail           24 Mar  9 07:39 joe-session-0.550197762743668
   4 -rw-------    1 joe      mail           24 Mar  9 07:22 joe-session-0.718532812389643
[root@www sessions]# ls -la
total 20
drwxr-xr--    2 joe      users        4096 Mar  9 07:22 .
dr-xr-xr-x    9 joe      users        4096 Mar  9 07:21 ..
-rw-------    1 joe      mail           24 Mar  9 07:21 joe-session-0.0109632721441848
-rw-------    1 joe      mail           24 Mar  9 07:39 joe-session-0.550197762743668
-rw-------    1 joe      mail           24 Mar  9 07:22 joe-session-0.718532812389643
[root@www sessions]#

that 4k blocks are used up as the smallest block size, so total = 20k really which breaks down to 4k per file, including directories?