Using ls command

UNIX for Beginners Q & A UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers
1

When using ls to view the contents of a large directory, how do you make the listing appear page at a time so you can view the entire listing and not just the last page? I searched the ls manual pages but had no luck there, I found no option that does this.

2

you can pipe to more
eg
ls -l |more

3

You Can also use 'pg' or 'less' with 'ls command'

ls -l | pg

ls -l | less
The less will help you scroll either backward or forward direction,by using <ctrl-b> or <ctrl-f>. whereas more is unidirectional ,less is bidirection paging.

4

Thanks. I thought maybe it could be done without a pipe.

5

In your shell init file (e.g., $HOME/.profile or $HOME/.bash_profile), put

l() { ls "$@" | less; }

Now, when you open a new shell, you will have a command, l, which does what you want.

Note that you might have to 'unalias l' if you have it defined (as some systems do).

6

Thanks for the detailed response.