Intro To 'dir' Command In Linux

2023-06-02 - By Robert Elder

     I use the 'dir' command to do exactly the same thing as this 'ls' command:

/usr/bin/ls -C -b

     and that's pretty much all there is to this command.

-C And '-b' Flags

     The '-C' flag causes entries to be listed by columns, and the '-b' flag enables C style escaping for non-graphical characters:

touch $(echo -e "escape-\x1B-escape.txt")

ls escape-^[-escape.txt

'escape-'$'\033''-escape.txt'

ls -b escape-^[-escape.txt

escape-\033-escape.txt

ls escape-^[-escape.txt | xxd

00000000: 6573 6361 7065 2d1b 2d65 7363 6170 652e  escape-.-escape.
00000010: 7478 740a                                txt.

Same Source & Documentation

     If you do a comparison between the man pages for the 'ls' command and the 'dir' command, you'll see that the only difference is that the word 'ls' has been replaced by the word 'dir':

vim -d <(man ls) <(man dir)

     You can further verify the connection between these two commands by reviewing the source code for the 'ls' command, where a comment shows that the 'dir' command as well as the 'vdir' command are simply thin wrappers around the 'ls' command:

...
/* If ls_mode is LS_MULTI_COL,
   the multi-column format is the default regardless
   of the type of output device.
   This is for the 'dir' program.
...

     And that's why the 'dir' command is my favourite Linux command.