Command-Line – What is the ‘la’ Command?

command linels

I just mistyped ls as la. Without noticing, I ran it:

tim@Hairy:~$ la
detection.sh   output-2.jpg  output-4.jpg  output-6.jpg  output-8.jpg Test1.pdf
output-1.jpg   output-3.jpg  output-5.jpg  output-7.jpg  output-9.jpg     

tim@Hairy:~$ ls
detection.sh   output-2.jpg  output-4.jpg  output-6.jpg  output-8.jpg Test1.pdf
output-1.jpg   output-3.jpg  output-5.jpg  output-7.jpg  output-9.jpg

What's the difference between ls and la?

Best Answer

From .bashrc file in your home directory, we have these aliases:

# some more ls aliases
alias ll='ls -alF'
alias la='ls -A'
alias l='ls -CF'

la is just an alias of ls with just the -A option.

From man ls

ls -alF

   -a, --all
          do not ignore entries starting with .

   -l     use a long listing format

   -F, --classify
          append indicator (one of */=>@|) to entries


ls -A

   -A, --almost-all
          do not list implied . and ..
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