How to list only files and not directories of a directory Bash

Question

How can I list all the files of one folder but not their folders or subfiles  In other words  How can I list only the files

User · Answer

ls -p   grep -v     ls -p lets you show   after the folder name  which acts as a tag for you to remove

User · Answer

You can also use ls with grep or egrep and put it in your profile as an alias   ls -l   egrep -v   d  ls -l   grep -v   d

User · Answer

find files        ls -l  home   grep   -    tr -s       cut -d     -f 9  find directories  ls -l  home   grep   d    tr -s       cut -d     -f 9  find links        ls -l  home   grep   l    tr -s       cut -d     -f 9  tr -s     turns the output into a space-delimited file the cut command says the delimiter is a space  and return the 9th field  always the filename directory name linkname    I use this all the time

User · Answer

Listing content of some directory  without subdirectories  I like using ls options  for sample         -l                         use a long listing format   -t                         sort by modification time  newest first   -r                         reverse order while sorting   -F  --classify             append indicator  one of         to entries   -h  --human-readable       with -l and -s  print sizes like 1K 234M 2G etc         Sometime --color and all others   See ls --help   Listing everything but folders  This will show files  symlinks  devices  pipe  sockets etc   so  find  some path -maxdepth 1   -type d   could be sorted by date easily   find  some path -maxdepth 1   -type d -exec ls -hltrF        Listing files only   or  find  some path -maxdepth 1 -type f   sorted by size   find  some path -maxdepth 1 -type f -exec ls -lSF --color        Prevent listing of hidden entries   To not show hidden entries  where name begin by a dot  you could add   -name        find  some path -maxdepth 1   -type d   -name      -exec ls -hltrF        Then  You could replace  some path by   to list for current directory or    for parent directory

User · Answer

find  -maxdepth    does not work with my old version of bash  therefore I use   for f in   ls    do if   -f  f     then echo  f   fi   done

User · Answer

carlpett s find-based answer  find   -maxdepth 1 -type f  works in principle  but is not quite the same as using ls  you get a potentially unsorted list of filenames all prefixed with     and you lose the ability to apply ls s many options  also find invariably finds hidden items too  whereas ls  behavior depends on the presence or absence of the -a or -A options    An improvement  suggested by Alex Hall in a comment on the question is to combine shell globbing with find       find   -maxdepth 0 -type f    find -L       includes symlinks to files    However  while this addresses the prefix problem and gives you alphabetically sorted output  you still have neither  inline  control over inclusion of hidden items nor access to ls s many other sorting   output-format options    Hans Roggeman s ls   grep answer is pragmatic  but locks you into using long  -l  output format      To address these limitations I wrote the fls  filtering ls  utility     a utility that provides the output flexibility of ls while also providing type-filtering capability  simply by placing type-filtering characters such as f for files  d for directories  and l for symlinks before a list of ls arguments  run fls --help or fls --man to learn more     Examples   fls f          list all files in current dir  fls d -tA       list dirs  in home dir   including hidden ones  most recent first fls f l  usr local bin c    List matches that are files  but not     symlinks  l      Installation  Supported platforms   When installing from the npm registry  Linux and macOS When installing manually  any Unix-like platform with Bash    From the npm registry  Note  Even if you don t use Node js  its package manager  npm  works across platforms and is easy to install  try curl -L https   git io n-install   bash  With Node js installed  install as follows    sudo  npm install fls -g   Note    Whether you need sudo depends on how you installed Node js   io js and whether you ve changed permissions later  if you get an EACCES error  try again with sudo  The -g ensures global installation and is needed to put fls in your system s  PATH    Manual installation   Download this bash script as fls  Make it executable with chmod  x fls  Move it or symlink it to a folder in your  PATH  such as  usr local bin  macOS  or  usr bin  Linux

User · Answer

Just adding on to carlpett s answer  For a much useful view of the files  you could pipe the output to ls   find   -maxdepth 1 -type f ls -lt less   Shows the most recently modified files in a list format  quite useful when you have downloaded a lot of files  and want to see a non-cluttered version of the recent ones

User · Answer

find   -maxdepth 1 -type f   xargs ls -1t   less      added xargs to make it works  and used -1 instead of -l to show only filenames without additional ls info

User · Answer

Using find   find   -maxdepth 1 -type f   Using the -maxdepth 1 option ensures that you only look in the current directory  or  if you replace the   with some path  that directory   If you want a full recursive listing of all files in that and subdirectories  just remove that option

[bash] How to list only files and not directories of a directory Bash?

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