60

I often use this list command in Unix (AIX / KSH):

ls -Artl

It displays the files as this:

-rw-r--r-- 1 myuser mygroup 0 Apr 2 11:59 test1.txt
-rw-r--r-- 1 myuser mygroup 0 Apr 2 11:59 test2.txt

I would like to modify the command such a way that the full path of the file is displayed. For example:

-rw-r--r-- 1 myuser mygroup 0 Apr 2 11:59 /usr/test1.txt
-rw-r--r-- 1 myuser mygroup 0 Apr 2 11:59 /usr/test2.txt

Any ideas?

I found several resolution methods using pwd or find but - as far as I see - this does not work work if I want to keep the ls options.

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64

What about this trick...

ls -lrt -d -1 $PWD/{*,.*}

OR

ls -lrt -d -1 $PWD/*

I think this has problems with empty directories but if another poster has a tweak I'll update my answer. Also, you may already know this but this is probably be a good candidate for an alias given it's lengthiness.

[update] added some tweaks based on comments, thanks guys.

[update] as pointed out by the comments you may need to tweek the matcher expressions depending on the shell (bash vs zsh). I've re-added my older command for reference.

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  • After your update the command does not work anymore for me. Message cannot access /mydir/mysubdir/{*,.*}: No such file or directory – TechnoCore Apr 7 '11 at 12:53
  • .* seems to match . and .. on bash, but not on zsh. (ls -A doesn't show them, so my previous suggestion only fully works on zsh, and maybe even then my .zshrc has something to do with it) – StackExchange saddens dancek Apr 7 '11 at 12:55
  • One more thing: ls -lrt -d -1 $PWD/{*,.[^.]*} would not show . and .. in sh, but in zsh shows dot-files twice. There $PWD/* seems to be sufficient. – bmk Apr 7 '11 at 13:07
  • Another challenge: you can't use wildcard filter, right? What if I want to see ls -Artl *.log with full path? – TechnoCore Apr 7 '11 at 14:12
  • you could wrap in a tiny shell script that changes the $PWD/* part. But that's probably for a different question. – Andrew White Apr 7 '11 at 14:15
40

Try this, works for me: ls -d /a/b/c/*

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14

Use this command:

ls -ltr /mig/mthome/09/log/*

instead of:

ls -ltr /mig/mthome/09/log

to get the full path in the listing.

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  • 1
    I like this solution better for its simplicity and ease of use. I suppose the other solution might be usable if you created an alias out of it, but realistically, nobody is going to bother to type all that in. – jsarma Jul 13 '13 at 18:15
  • Not display the full path, try ls -ltr . |more in any place, shows only filenames, not absolute paths. – Peter Krauss Jan 12 '18 at 11:24
6

I use this command:

ls -1 | xargs readlink -f
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  • Depending on your file names might need to do ls -Q1 | xargs readlink -f But this worked great for me. – mlibby Aug 2 '14 at 15:52
  • 2
    that's a great solution, but what's the difference from a simple readlink -f? – user2141046 Sep 6 '15 at 13:19
  • 1
    you must have xargs aliased on your machine as 'xargs -L 1'. otherwise this doesn't work for more than one file. the command, in that case is \ls -1 | xargs -L 1 readlink -f – user2141046 Oct 6 '15 at 9:36
  • This is the only answer that really display the full path (absolute paths)! – Peter Krauss Jan 12 '18 at 11:25
  • 1
    on macOS, use the homebrew package coreutils (likely already installed) which will install greadlink instead. – Vivek Gani Nov 24 '18 at 21:14
4

optimized from spacedrop answer ...

ls $(pwd)/*

and you can use ls options 

ls -alrt $(pwd)/*
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  • 2
    backticks ```` are discourage now and new way to to command substitution is to use $() – Kiwy Jun 8 '18 at 15:02
  • @Kiwy ok ! doing this we get Andrew White 's answer (wich is very nice I agree) – jo_ Jun 11 '18 at 21:16
1

simply use find tool.

find absolute_path

displays full paths on my Linux machine, while

find relative_path

will not.

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  • Thanks, this worked for me. I used find "/media/lubuntu/mount point/folder/". I used find "/media/lubuntu/mount point/folder/" | grep "pattern" to find the files I wanted. Any time I used that $PWD/* method as other user suggested it gave me errors. – Rublacava 3 mins ago
0

I wrote a shell script called fullpath that contains this code, use it everyday:

    #!/bin/sh
    for i in $* ; do
        echo $(pwd)/$i
    done

Put it somewhere in your PATH, and make it executable(chmod 755 fullpath) then just use
fullpath file_or_directory

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-1

You can combine the find command and the ls command. Use the path (.) and selector (*) to narrow down the files you're after. Surround the find command in back quotes. The argument to -name is doublequote star doublequote in case you can't read it.

ls -lart `find . -type f -name "*" `
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