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.
Can you show/list all extended-attributes and how?
The -m ^ matches start of any string without need for escaping the parameter and double dash — is needed as a separator in case the filename or directory starts with a dash.
This is technically not correct. Try using getfattr to list xattrs in the system namespace on an NTFS filesystem mounted via the ntfs-3g driver. Even as root they are not listed. However, one can get the value of the xattr, eg. system.ntfs_acl , if specifying the name of the xattr explicitly via the -n parameter. I’ve yet to see a way to have the system xattrs listed.
getfattr is not present in my debian distribution. I use this instead:
That is different attributes. «lsattr» lists «file attributes» which is a specific set of attributes available on ext* file systems. «getfattr» lists «extended attributes» which is a kind of name-value pairs available on several file systems. See the respective manual pages for details.
This is misleading. The getfattr command is an official part of Ubuntu, and presumably Debian, but is in the attr package, which is not installed by default. Use apt install attr to get it. And it is indeed different than lsattr as noted by Göran.
I-node flags (ext2 extended file attributes) is derived from the ext2 file system, but nowadays it is also available on other file systems. A minor supplement to @GöranUddeborg’s comment.
On a MacOs the Unix flavor is Darwin which is derived from BSD. In this version of Unix, use the command xattr to list (or create, write, or clear) the extended attributes.
xattr will just list the names of the attributes
xattr -l will list their names and values
xattr -h for a more succinct help message
man xattr for a detailed help message ( ZZ to exit the help)
The command to list all extended attributes is ls -l@ .
An example (from my mac, linux/BSD will look different):
felixphew-mbp:/ felixphew$ ls -l@ total 45 drwxrwxr-x+ 63 root admin 2142 27 Dec 17:49 Applications drwxr-xr-x+ 62 root wheel 2108 16 Nov 06:25 Library drwxr-xr-x@ 2 root wheel 68 10 Sep 06:47 Network com.apple.FinderInfo 32 drwxr-xr-x+ 4 root wheel 136 1 Nov 14:02 System drwxr-xr-x 6 root admin 204 28 Dec 07:36 Users drwxrwxrwt@ 3 root admin 102 30 Dec 06:40 Volumes com.apple.FinderInfo 32 drwxr-xr-x@ 39 root wheel 1326 11 Nov 07:06 bin com.apple.FinderInfo 32 drwxrwxr-t@ 2 root admin 68 10 Sep 06:47 cores com.apple.FinderInfo 32 dr-xr-xr-x 3 root wheel 4306 30 Dec 06:40 dev lrwxr-xr-x@ 1 root wheel 11 1 Nov 13:56 etc -> private/etc com.apple.FinderInfo 32 dr-xr-xr-x 2 root wheel 1 30 Dec 06:40 home -rw-r--r--@ 1 root wheel 313 1 Oct 16:12 installer.failurerequests com.apple.FinderInfo 32 dr-xr-xr-x 2 root wheel 1 30 Dec 06:40 net drwxr-xr-x@ 3 root wheel 102 12 Aug 07:19 opt com.apple.FinderInfo 32 drwxr-xr-x@ 6 root wheel 204 1 Nov 14:05 private com.apple.FinderInfo 32 drwxr-xr-x@ 59 root wheel 2006 18 Nov 07:46 sbin com.apple.FinderInfo 32 drwxr-xr-x@ 3 root wheel 102 22 Dec 07:46 srv com.apple.FinderInfo 32 lrwxr-xr-x@ 1 root wheel 11 1 Nov 13:57 tmp -> private/tmp com.apple.FinderInfo 32 drwxr-xr-x@ 13 root wheel 442 23 Nov 11:20 usr com.apple.FinderInfo 32 lrwxr-xr-x@ 1 root wheel 11 1 Nov 13:57 var -> private/var com.apple.FinderInfo 32 felixphew-mbp:/ felixphew$ ls -l total 45 drwxrwxr-x+ 63 root admin 2142 27 Dec 17:49 Applications drwxr-xr-x+ 62 root wheel 2108 16 Nov 06:25 Library drwxr-xr-x@ 2 root wheel 68 10 Sep 06:47 Network drwxr-xr-x+ 4 root wheel 136 1 Nov 14:02 System drwxr-xr-x 6 root admin 204 28 Dec 07:36 Users drwxrwxrwt@ 3 root admin 102 30 Dec 06:40 Volumes drwxr-xr-x@ 39 root wheel 1326 11 Nov 07:06 bin drwxrwxr-t@ 2 root admin 68 10 Sep 06:47 cores dr-xr-xr-x 3 root wheel 4306 30 Dec 06:40 dev lrwxr-xr-x@ 1 root wheel 11 1 Nov 13:56 etc -> private/etc dr-xr-xr-x 2 root wheel 1 30 Dec 06:40 home -rw-r--r--@ 1 root wheel 313 1 Oct 16:12 installer.failurerequests dr-xr-xr-x 2 root wheel 1 30 Dec 06:40 net drwxr-xr-x@ 3 root wheel 102 12 Aug 07:19 opt drwxr-xr-x@ 6 root wheel 204 1 Nov 14:05 private drwxr-xr-x@ 59 root wheel 2006 18 Nov 07:46 sbin drwxr-xr-x@ 3 root wheel 102 22 Dec 07:46 srv lrwxr-xr-x@ 1 root wheel 11 1 Nov 13:57 tmp -> private/tmp drwxr-xr-x@ 13 root wheel 442 23 Nov 11:20 usr lrwxr-xr-x@ 1 root wheel 11 1 Nov 13:57 var -> private/var