These options affect the information that ls displays. By default, only file names are shown.
//DIRED// beg1 end1 beg2 end2 ...
The begn and endn are unsigned integers that record the byte position of the beginning and end of each file name in the output. This makes it easy for Emacs to find the names, even when they contain unusual characters such as space or newline, without fancy searching.
If directories are being listed recursively (-R), output a similar line with offsets for each subdirectory name:
//SUBDIRED// beg1 end1 ...
Finally, output a line of the form:
//DIRED-OPTIONS// --quoting-style=word
where word is the quoting style (see Formatting the file names).
Here is an actual example:
$ mkdir -p a/sub/deeper a/sub2 $ touch a/f1 a/f2 $ touch a/sub/deeper/file $ ls -gloRF --dired a a: total 8 -rw-r--r-- 1 0 Jun 10 12:27 f1 -rw-r--r-- 1 0 Jun 10 12:27 f2 drwxr-xr-x 3 4096 Jun 10 12:27 sub/ drwxr-xr-x 2 4096 Jun 10 12:27 sub2/ a/sub: total 4 drwxr-xr-x 2 4096 Jun 10 12:27 deeper/ a/sub/deeper: total 0 -rw-r--r-- 1 0 Jun 10 12:27 file a/sub2: total 0 //DIRED// 48 50 84 86 120 123 158 162 217 223 282 286 //SUBDIRED// 2 3 167 172 228 240 290 296 //DIRED-OPTIONS// --quoting-style=literal
Note that the pairs of offsets on the ‘//DIRED//’ line above delimit these names: f1, f2, sub, sub2, deeper, file. The offsets on the ‘//SUBDIRED//’ line delimit the following directory names: a, a/sub, a/sub/deeper, a/sub2.
Here is an example of how to extract the fifth entry name, ‘deeper’, corresponding to the pair of offsets, 222 and 228:
$ ls -gloRF --dired a > out $ dd bs=1 skip=222 count=6 < out 2>/dev/null; echo deeper
Note that although the listing above includes a trailing slash for the ‘deeper’ entry, the offsets select the name without the trailing slash. However, if you invoke ls with --dired along with an option like --escape (aka -b) and operate on a file whose name contains special characters, notice that the backslash is included:
$ touch 'a b' $ ls -blog --dired 'a b' -rw-r--r-- 1 0 Jun 10 12:28 a\ b //DIRED// 30 34 //DIRED-OPTIONS// --quoting-style=escape
If you use a quoting style that adds quote marks
(e.g., --quoting-style=c), then the offsets include the quote marks.
So beware that the user may select the quoting style via the environment
variable QUOTING_STYLE. Hence, applications using --dired
should either specify an explicit --quoting-style=literal option
(aka -N or --literal) on the command line, or else be
prepared to parse the escaped names.
Normally the size is printed as a byte count without punctuation, but this can be overridden (see Block size). For example, -h prints an abbreviated, human-readable count, and ‘--block-size="'1"’ prints a byte count with the thousands separator of the current locale.
For each directory that is listed, preface the files with a line ‘total blocks’, where blocks is the total disk allocation for all files in that directory. The block size currently defaults to 1024 bytes, but this can be overridden (see Block size). The blocks computed counts each hard link separately; this is arguably a deficiency.
The file type is one of the following characters:
The file mode bits listed are similar to symbolic mode specifications (see Symbolic Modes). But ls combines multiple bits into the third character of each set of permissions as follows:
Following the file mode bits is a single character that specifies whether an alternate access method such as an access control list applies to the file. When the character following the file mode bits is a space, there is no alternate access method. When it is a printing character, then there is such a method.
GNU ls uses a ‘.’ character to indicate a file with an SELinux security context, but no other alternate access method.
A file with any other combination of alternate access methods
is marked with a ‘+’ character.
Normally the disk allocation is printed in units of 1024 bytes, but this can be overridden (see Block size).
For files that are NFS-mounted from an HP-UX system to a BSD system, this option reports sizes that are half the correct values. On HP-UX systems, it reports sizes that are twice the correct values for files that are NFS-mounted from BSD systems. This is due to a flaw in HP-UX; it also affects the HP-UX ls program.