Learn How to Use 'dir' Command with Different Options and Arguments in Linux

This article shows some examples of using the dir command to list the contents of a directory. The dir command is not a commonly used command in Linux. Though it works more less like the ls command which most Linux users prefer to use. We’ll be discussing the dir command where we shall look at how to use different options and arguments.

dir Command Usage in Linux

The general syntax of the dir command is as follows.

# dir [OPTION] [FILE]

dir Command Syntax dir Command Usage with Examples Simple output of the dir command

# dir /

dir Command Output

Output of the dir command with the /etc directory file is as follows. As you can see from the output not all files in the /etc directory are listed.

# dir /etc

List /etc Directory

To list one file per line use -1 option as follows.

# dir
# dir -1

List Files per Line View all files in a directory including hidden files

To list all files in a directory including . (hidden) files, use the -a option. You can include the -l option to format output as a list.

# dir -a
# dir -al

List Hidden Files Long List Hidden Files View directory entries instead of content

When you need to list only directory entries instead of directory content, you can use the -d option. In the output below, the option -d lists entries for the /etc directory.

When you use -dl, it shows a long listing of the directory including owner, group owner, permissions.

# dir -d /etc
# dir -dl /etc

Long List /etc Directory View index number of files

In case you want to view the index number of each file, use the option -i. From the output below, you can see that first column shows numbers. These numbers are called inodes which are sometimes referred to as index nodes or index numbers.

An inode in Linux systems is a data storage on a filesystem that stores information about a file except the filename and its actual data.

# dir -il

List Index Number of Files List files and their allocated sizes in blocks

You can view files sizes using the -s option. If you need to sort the files according to size, then use the -S option.

In this case you need to also use the -h option to view the files sizes in a human-readable format.

# dir -shl

List Files with Sizes

In the output above, the first column shows the size of files in Kilobytes. The output below shows a sorted list of files according to their sizes by using the -S option.

# dir -ashlS /home/kone

Sort Files with Sizes

You can also sort by modification time, with the file that has recently been modified appearing first on the list. This can be done using the -t option.

# dir -ashlt /home/kone

Sort Files by Modification Time List files without owner or group owner

To list files without their owners, you have to use -g option which works like the -l option only that it does not print out the file owner. And to list files without group owner use the -G option as follows.

# dir -ahgG /home/kone

List Files without Owner

As you can notice from the output above that the name of the file owner and the group owner are not printed. You can as well view the author of a file by using the –author flag as follows.

# dir -al --author /home/kone

View Author of Files

In the output above, the fifth column shows the name of the author of a file. The examples.desktop files is owned by user kone, belongs to group kili and it was authored by user kone.

List directories before other files

You may wish to view directories before all other files and this can be done by using the –group-directories-first flag as follows.

# dir -l --group-directories-first

List Group Directory Files

When you observe the output above, you can see that all the directories are listed before the regular files. The letter d before the permissions indicates a directory and a indicates a regular file.

You can also view subdirectories recursively, meaning that you can list all other subdirectories in a directory using the -R option as follows.

# dir -R

List Directories Recursively

In the above output, the (.) sign means the current directory and home directory of user Kone has three subdirectories that is Backup, dir and Docs.

The Backup subdirectory has two other subdirectories that is mariadb and mysql which have no subdirectories.

The dir subdirectory does not have any subdirectory. And the Docs subdirectory has two subdirectories namely Books and Tuts which do not have subdirectories.

View user and group IDs instead of names

To view user and group IDs, you need to use -n option. Let us observe the difference between the next two outputs.

Output without -n option.

# dir -l --author

List Files Without ID’s

Output with -n option.

# dir -nl --author

List Files with ID’s View entries separated by commas

This can be archived by using -m option.

# dir -am

List Entries by Comma

To find help in using the dir command use –help flag and to view version details of dir use –version.

Conclusion

These are just examples of basic usage of the dir command, to use many other options see the manual entry for dir command on your system. In case you find any other interesting options or ways of using the dir command, lets us know by writing a comment. Hope you find this article useful.