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What is the equivalent option for the ls command to activate pagination as in DOS the dir /p does?

5 Answers 5

69

There's no straightforward equivalent in ls itself, but there's the less utility, which will format the output of any command as seperate pages, scrollable by line or page:

ls -C | less

Where -C triggers column display. Use lah as arguments (ls -lah) to get a line by line display with all files being displayed (include hidden ones), and human readable filesizes.

  • To get colours to show up properly, you need to add the --color=always argument to ls, and the -R argument on less*:

    ls -C --color=always | less -R

    alt text
    this shows 'ls -ah --color=always | less -R'

In contrast to more, less will let you scroll through the output. It's also a bit faster for very large listings.

The pipe works like this:

Every program has input and output, a pipe redirects the output of one program (ls) to the input of another program (less). And less simply expects input which it then formats.

  • A more old-school dos equivalent would be pg:

    ls | pg
    

You can also

  • Use ls | head or ls | tail to display only the first or last part of the output
  • Use watch "ls" to keep the display open, updating it every few seconds to watch changes
  • Use banner $(ls) if you're sitting really far away from the screen. (;

  • If you find all of that too long to remember, you can set up an alias for it:

    Open ~/.bash_aliases with a text editor and add something like this to it:

    alias lsp="ls -ah --color=always | less -R"
    

    (this is a script that is run every time a new virtual terminal is started up, you should set up all your permanent aliases there)

    Now you can just type lsp, or whatever name you choose.

    If you want to be able to pass further arguments to your alias, we need to define a function instead:

    lsp(){ ls -ah --color=always "$@" | less -R; }
    

    A function, principally looking like this: name(){ commands; }; can accept arguments, $1, $2, $3 and so on. $@ means "every argument, if any".

    You can now run something like lsp *.py, lsp -C, and so on. We insert the arguments at the point where they get passed to ls. We could also have inserted $* for less, if it were the important command. You can see all of ls' arguments at man ls (worth a read).


*: The reason for this is, that whenever you Pipe something, it detects a Terminal (actually the other program) not capable of displaying colour. "--color=always" forces ls to ignore this. The -R switch makes less repaint the screen, escaping the colours properly.

8
  • thanks great answer, exactly the part with the alias came to my mind when i saw the long commandline. the only disadvantage by creating the alias is that using a wildcard filter like *.pdf this isn't possible? perhaps does there exist also a solution for this?
    – NES
    Jan 2, 2011 at 14:02
  • Everything is possible ;-) I added the bit about arguments, I somehow didn't think of it earlier. Jan 2, 2011 at 14:22
  • 2
    you gave more than expected :) thanks for the detailed answer. P.S. do you know if there are differences between bash and fish that somehow prevent this alias argument passing method from working in fish? i got the alias without the argument option to work here.
    – NES
    Jan 2, 2011 at 14:47
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    Ok, here askubuntu.com/questions/19728/… the new question starts, thanks again for your helpful answers so far.
    – NES
    Jan 2, 2011 at 15:14
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    $* and $@ do the exact same thing. They expand to $1 $2 $3 .... Quoted, however, "$@" expands to "$1" "$2" "$3" ... while "$*" expands to "$1 $2 $3 ..." (that is, all arguments into one string, using the first character of IFS as separator). mywiki.wooledge.org/BashGuide/Parameters
    – geirha
    Feb 3, 2011 at 13:12
4

I am not sure if there is some ls command for pagination. However, you may use a pipe and less, like this:

ls | less

And use q to exit.

2

Try ls | less or ls | more. The second one is close to the DOS version.

2
  • 1
    Is there perhaps another method? because the disadvantage is for me that the colorization of the shell isn't active when using a pipe?
    – NES
    Jan 2, 2011 at 13:41
  • 2
    Try ls --color=always -C | less -R
    – FUZxxl
    Jun 12, 2015 at 9:51
0
echo 'alias ls="ls --color=always"' >> ~/.bash_aliases
echo 'lsc(){ ls -C "$@" | less -R; }' >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bash_aliases && source ~/.bashrc

Result running lsc in a terminal

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0

Pagination can be done by using the following command.

$ ls

Above command will print the out in a scrollable format.

$ ls | pager

Above command will print the out in a paginated format.

Some extra pointers:-

  • Use spacebar to go to next page.
  • Use q to exit the pagination.

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