Ubuntu – Difference between ‘dir’ and ‘ls’ terminal commands

command linecoreutilsdirectoryls

I've been trying to find the difference between using the dir and ls commands in terminal. I know ls is the traditional UNIX method of viewing the files in a directory, and that dir is the windows command prompt equivalent, but both commands work in terminal.

If I type in dir, it displays the files and folders in the directory, and if I type ls, it does the same, except with content highlighting. Both commands accept options (i.e. ls -a and dir -a both return all files and folders and hidden files.

So does anyone know what the difference is and why both dir and ls are used?

Best Answer

dir and ls are part of coreutils and dir is almost the same as ls, just with different default options.

The GNU Core Utilities are the basic file, shell and text manipulation utilities of the GNU operating system. These are the core utilities which are expected to exist on every operating system.

info dir says:

dir is equivalent to ls -C -b; that is, by default files are listed in columns, sorted vertically, and special characters are represented by backslash escape sequences.

Oh and there is also vdir! info vdir says:

vdir is equivalent to ls -l -b; that is, by default files are listed in long format and special characters are represented by backslash escape sequences.

Most likely dir exists for backwards compatibility or due to historical reasons.

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – How to have `ll` command not display hidden files

Open the file .bashrc in your home directory. The should be an entry which looks like:

alias ll='ls -la'

Remove the last a, save the file and open a new shell. Now ll should work as want you. If you do not find the line, you can add it to your .bashrc:

alias ll='ls -l'

Ubuntu – meaning of “’” (apostrophe) in terminal commands

The ' character is a very powerful character whenever used in any shell command. Basically the ' (apostrophe marks) disables all kinds of transformations or modifications. It would consider whatever is enclosed with the ' marks as a single entity i.e. a single parameter. Absolutely no sort of substitution or expansion would take place.

Example:

 $ echo '$HOME'

would produce at the output the string $HOME itself and would not print the path to your home directory. Since the single quotes prevents any sort of expansion, substitution and simple considers whatever to be present as a simple parameter in itself.

If you want to use the apostrophe as it is, you have to escape it:

 $ mkdir foo\'bar

 $ cd foo\'bar

If it is not escaped, it will wait for it's pair to be closed, like it happened in your first example.

So, corrected, your command will be:

 $ export foo\'bar=1

NOTE: As Milan Todorovic noticed, this will not be valid, because you cannot use apostrophe in this case.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – How to have `ll` command not display hidden files

Ubuntu – meaning of “’” (apostrophe) in terminal commands

Related Question