Linux command information about file

Linux: Display File Properties via Terminal

We commonly need and want to know more about the files and directories that we are working with.

Most people know one of the ways, which is simply to Right Click > Properties on the wanted folder or file to view their properties. Though, for the more terminal-savvy, here’s how you can get the same (and more) information via the Terminal in Linux.

The ls Command

One of the most commonly used commands is the ls command, which lists all of the files and directories you’re located in, alongside their names.

Once you position yourself on a file path that you want, you can list all present files/folders via:

$ ls Folder_one large.jpg os.zip 

Alternatively, you can supply a directory name to list files from, without having to move to that directory:

$ ls Folder_one cpfile.c Direct fileinfo.c 

Though, these are just the names, and we can’t infer much from them. The ls command has several non-mandatory options which, when turned on, give us much more about these files when listing them.

You can use them alone, or by combining a few of them, depending on what exactly you are looking for.

Getting Details With the -l Option

The -l option will modify the ls command to give you much more detailed info, such as whether an entry is a file or directory, the size (usually in bytes), modified date and time, permissions, and more:

The result of this command should look something like:

total 15168 drwxrwxr-x 3 marija marija 4096 Jul 18 19:26 Folder_one -rwxrwxrwx 1 marija marija 164461 Sep 12 2017 large.jpg -rw-rw-r-- 1 marija marija 15354276 Oct 25 2018 os.zip 

Here we can see that we have one directory (d in drwxrwxr-x ), named Folder_one , and 2 files. We can also see their owner and group, marija , and their size in bytes, as well as their modification date/time.

The number following the permissions is the number of links to the file or directory.

If you’d like to read more about permissions and how to change them via the terminal, read our Guide to Understanding chmod.

Note: You can get far with the -l flag, and by combining other flags with it, the ls command will get you far for this task.

Human-Readable -lh Option

If you want a more human-readable form, you can add the joined extension -lh or simply -h after the -l option:

$ ls -lh total 15M drwxrwxr-x 3 marija marija 4,0K Jul 18 19:26 Folder_one -rwxrwxrwx 1 marija marija 161K Sep 12 2017 large.jpg -rw-rw-r-- 1 marija marija 15M Oct 25 2018 os.zip 

Now, we can see the size of files shown in KB, MB, GB, etc. instead of showing only in bytes, which can be very helpful. Though, that’s mostly the benefit you get from this flag.

Showing Hidden Files With the -la Option

Hidden files start with a dot symbol ( . ) and aren’t meant to be picked up by most GUI software, or the ls command. These are typically files that you don’t want to see, so this makes perfect sense.

On the other hand, if you’d specifically like to also include hidden files while listing the files of a directory — you can add the -a flag. Combining the -l flag and -a flag, you can print the hidden files alongside regular files — with their information:

$ ls -la total 15212 drwxr-xr-x 3 marija marija 4096 Jul 18 20:03 . drwxr-xr-x 29 marija marija 4096 Jul 18 20:13 .. drwxrwxr-x 3 marija marija 4096 Jul 18 19:26 Folder_one -rwxrwxrwx 1 marija marija 164461 Sep 12 2017 large.jpg -rw-rw-r-- 1 marija marija 15354276 Oct 25 2018 os.zip -rw-r--r-- 1 marija marija 12288 Jan 29 2018 .tekst.txt.swn -rw-r--r-- 1 marija marija 12288 Jan 29 2018 .tekst.txt.swo -rw-r--r-- 1 marija marija 12288 Jan 29 2018 .tekst.txt.swp 

Displaying Block Size With the -s Option

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The -s option displays the file’s size in blocks, rather than regular bytes:

$ ls -s total 15168 4 Folder_one 164 large.jpg 15000 os.zip 

Note: Blocks are the smallest writable unit for your system and hardware.

Sorting Files by Size with the -lS Option

The -S flag, not to be confused with the lowercase -s from earlier, is a sorting flag. It sorts the files by size, in descending order:

$ ls -lS total 15168 -rw-rw-r-- 1 marija marija 15354276 Oct 25 2018 os.zip -rwxrwxrwx 1 marija marija 164461 Sep 12 2017 large.jpg drwxrwxr-x 3 marija marija 4096 Jul 18 19:26 Folder_one 

Recursive Listing with the -R Option

If you want to list subdirectories, you’ll have to make a recursive ls call. The -R option makes this a really simple endeavor.

It will give you a tree representation of all of the files or directories that happen to be in a particular place:

$ ls -R directory Screenshot 2021-07-26 at 18.53.05.png file.txt Screenshot 2021-07-26 at 21.15.20.png mpl directory/dvp-articles: axis-off directory/dvp-articles/axis-off: app.py get-pip.py directory/mpl: mpl-chapter-2-1.png 

Here, we’ve recursively called ls on the directory . Within it, there’s another directory — dvp-articles , and within it, yet another — axis-off . Within axis-off , there’s an app.py and get-pip.py .

Of course, you can chain the -l flag here as well, but the output might get a bit messy:

ls -lR directory [email protected] 1 david staff 369705 Jul 26 23:57 Screenshot 2021-07-26 at 23.57.34.png [email protected] 1 david staff 103861 Jul 27 00:05 Screenshot 2021-07-27 at 00.05.16.png drwxr-xr-x 3 david staff 96 Jun 17 18:00 dvp-articles -rw-r--r-- 1 david staff 0 Jun 25 17:11 file.txt drwxr-xr-x 3 david staff 96 Jul 16 20:19 mpl directory/dvp-articles: total 0 [email protected] 4 david staff 128 Jun 17 18:03 axis-off directory/dvp-articles/axis-off: total 3800 -rw-r--r-- 1 david staff 463 Jun 17 18:08 app.py -rw-r--r-- 1 david staff 1937800 Jun 17 18:03 get-pip.py directory/mpl: total 376 [email protected] 1 david staff 192506 Jul 16 20:18 mpl-chapter-2-1.png 

Option -i

To use inode, we can add the -i flag:

$ ls -i 688193 Folder_one 680393 large.jpg 680392 os.zip 

Of course, you can chain it with other flags such as:

$ ls -li 49323 [email protected] 3 david staff 96 Jun 16 20:39 Applications 34615 drwx------+ 15 david staff 480 Jul 27 00:05 Desktop . 

The stat Command

The stat command is much more like the good old Right Click > Properties approach, because it formats all of the data and properties in a very readable format. It requires a filepath and isn’t as customizable as ls :

File: 'Folder_one' Size: 4096 Blocks: 8 IO Block: 4096 directory Device: 805h/2053d Inode: 688193 Links: 3 Access: (0775/drwxrwxr-x) Uid: ( 1000/ marija) Gid: ( 1000/ marija) Access: 2021-07-18 20:04:03.205402891 +0200 Modify: 2021-07-18 19:26:00.681976407 +0200 Change: 2021-07-18 20:03:51.617219116 +0200 Birth: - 

For some, this is a much better solution than the ls command.

With stat , you can also format the printed info via —printf . You can filter out data such as the user name of the owner, group name of owner, or time of last status change, in even more human-readable form:

$ stat --printf='%U\n%G\n%z\n' Folder_one/ 

Which will in this case results in:

marija marija 2021-07-18 20:03:51.617219116 +0200 

Notice that we are putting »\n» after each wanted property, so that each is printed in a new line.

Conclusion

Using the terminal, it’s easy to find file properties, using ls with any of its accepted flags or via stat .

In this short guide, we’ve taken a look at how to display file properties using Linux.

Источник

how to find the meta information of a file using BASH [closed]

How to find the meta-information of a file in BASH? And how to extract and print it separately using cut and grep commands?

I’ve Found it Its » ls -l » Information About A File.. Like File Name, Permission, File Owner, Date etc..

find . -name «filename.txt» -print | xargs ls -iSl Will give you all files named filename.txt in the current directory (the dot). Then xargs is used to let ls get the standard input from the piped command. Then -iSl sorts and give you size and date. 6710 -rw-rw-r— 1 userA GroupB 2346 Nov 26 00:55 ./somefolder/filename.txt

4 Answers 4

Instead of parsing the output of ls using cut / grep , you should just use stat which takes a -c argument to specify the output format.

anthony@Zia:~$ stat -c '%n : %A : %U : %s' afiedt.buf .XCompose afiedt.buf : -rw-r--r-- : anthony : 178 .XCompose : lrwxrwxrwx : anthony : 38 

You can change the output format however you’d like; check the stat(1) manpage for details.

I’m just guessing here, but have you tried the command file ? It will try to identify what kind of file it is.

Actually, My Output Should Be Like This: File Name: File Type: File Owner: File Permission: File Size: I’ve Used ls -l To Find The Meta-Info Of a File. I Need To Extract And Print It Like Above.

@meandyxtreme Have a look at the cut command that is very good at picking values from columns. And, please, stop with the «Capital Letter At The Start Of Every Word» thing. It makes it very hard to read.

Sorry about the capitalizing of every word. Look what i typed [ur10cs164@linux lab]$ ls -l lab2.txt -rw-rw-r-- 1 ur10cs164 ur10cs164 801 Jul 19 16:40 lab2.txt so the above line shows all the meta-info. so now how to extract them seperately. i’ve tried ‘cut’. Maybe the format i’ve typed may wrong. Lemme know the correct method to extract from it

Источник

How to display file properties via terminal?

What is the command line that displays file informations (or properties), such as in GUI method Display properties in GNOME? I know that ls -l shows properties; but how to display the same informations? For example, instead of

abdennour@estifeda: $wishedCmd myFile . Permissions : Owner Access: Read & write Group Access :Read & Write Others Access: Read only . 

What about stat ? That will give you a huge amount of information on a selected file or folder; see man stat .

10 Answers 10

Use the stat command to know the details of the file. If file name is file_name , use

There is no dedicated command for this. For meta information like time, size and access rights, use

You might also be interested in what kind of file it is, file path-to-file will help you with that.

#!/bin/bash print_perm() < case "$1" in 0) printf "NO PERMISSIONS";; 1) printf "Execute only";; 2) printf "Write only";; 3) printf "Write & execute";; 4) printf "Read only";; 5) printf "Read & execute";; 6) printf "Read & write";; 7) printf "Read & write & execute";; esac >[[ ! -e $1 ]] && echo "$0 " 2>&1 && exit 1 perm=$(stat -c%a "$1") user=$ group=$ global=$ echo "Permissions :" printf "\tOwner Access: $(print_perm $user)\n" printf "\tGroup Access: $(print_perm $group)\n" printf "\tOthers Access: $(print_perm $global)\n" 

# rwxr-x--- foo* > ./abovescript foo Permissions : Owner Access: Read & write & execute Group Access: Read & execute Others Access: NO PERMISSIONS 

for human readable version

This makes the filesize «readable». You get 32K instead of 31900. But does not help for access rights. But helpful anyway 😉

Display the attributes of the files in the current directory:

List the attributes of files in a particular path:

List file attributes recursively in the current and subsequent directories:

Show attributes of all the files in the current directory, including hidden ones:

Display attributes of directories in the current directory:

In Terminal you can use : « objdump -f file.exe « you’II see file format output like this : ` « file.exe: file format pei-i386 architecture: i386, flags 0x0000. EXEC_P, HAS_DEBUG, D_PAGED start address 0x00402. « So file format pei-i386 => 32bit Other method to check out what format the executable file has. using ` file ` command as example: « $ file myfile.exe « response > myfile.exe: PE32 executable (GUI) Intel 80386, for MS Windows «`

I tried the objdump way first and got «file format not recognized» then when I used the file command got «POSIX shell script, ASCII text executable, with very long lines»

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