lf

lf -- a formatable ls

by Cliff Miller

lf ("list formatted") is a version of ls with several significant new features:

The output can be formatted with an arbitrary printf-like format string, using special %-characters to refer to different stat(2) fields, e.g., %S for file size, %U for owner UID, etc., as well as %N for filename and %D for directory pathname.
- specifiers can include printf-like modifiers for field-width and type conversion (e.g. %8S to print size in an 8-character field, %xS or %8xS to print it in hex, etc.);
- timestamps can include a cftime-formatting string (e.g. %(%b %e %Y)M for "Jun 27 2003") or be shown as an "age" in arbitrary time units (%[s]M for seconds, %[d]M for days, etc.);
- permission modes, uid and gid can each be displayed numerically or symbolically.
- other useful formatters include %Z for a symbolic link target, and %Y for conditionally printing "-> linktarget" on symbolic links.
The file listing can be sorted on multiple keys -- i.e., if two files compare equally on one key, a second key can be used. Keys include name, extension, mtime/atime/ctime, size, uid, gid, and inode.
File sorting and printing can selectively dereference symbolic links or not, as desired. For example, %<sU in the formatting string refers to the owner of a symbolic link, whereas %>sU refers to the owner of the file pointed to by that link. Similar functionality is provided for in the sorting flags.
Recursive traversal order can be controlled by traversal-sorting flags that sort on stat(2) fields.
Recursion can be pruned (like -prune option of the find(1) command).

available releases

lf-0.2.0.tar.gz (9 April 2009)

examples

command	sample output
`lf -RN -o "%D/%N"` recursive listing, no directory headers, showing full pathname to each file (equivalent of `find -print`).	lf-0.1.1 lf-0.1.1/doc lf-0.1.1/src lf-0.1.1/doc/Makefile.am lf-0.1.1/doc/Makefile.in lf-0.1.1/doc/lf.1 lf-0.1.1/src/Makefile.am lf-0.1.1/src/Makefile.in lf-0.1.1/src/lf.c
`lf -o "%U %G %S %N"` list uid, gid, size and filename.	1062 20 512 Makefile.am 1062 20 11894 Makefile.in 1062 20 41950 lf.c 1062 1062 2 top
`lf -o "%sU %sG %S %N"` same as above except give symbolic user and group names.	cbm user 512 Makefile.am cbm user 11894 Makefile.in cbm user 41950 lf.c cbm cbm 2 top
`lf -o "%sP %(%D %T)M %N %Y"` list (rwx-style) permissions, modification time in MM/DD/YY HH:MM:SS format, filename, and symlink target if symlink.	-r--r--r-- 06/23/03 16:11:48 Makefile.am -rw-r--r-- 06/23/03 16:22:23 Makefile.in -r--r--r-- 06/23/03 16:11:49 lf.c lrwxrwxrwx 06/27/03 17:50:07 top -> ..
`lf -el` similar to `ls -l`, but format date as "%D %T".	drwxr-xr-x 2 cbm user 4096 07/06/04 21:55:33 CVS -rw-r--r-- 1 cbm user 9784 03/28/06 20:47:58 Makefile -rw-r--r-- 1 cbm user 533 03/28/06 20:23:32 Makefile.am -rw-r--r-- 1 cbm user 9851 03/28/06 20:45:38 Makefile.in -rw-r--r-- 1 cbm user 7218 03/28/06 20:43:43 lf.1
`lf -o "%P %[D]M %N"` list (octal) permissions, age of file in days (measured by calendar), and filename.	100444 4 Makefile.am 100644 4 Makefile.in 100444 4 lf.c 120777 0 top
`lf -o "%P %[d]M %N"` same as above except give age in days measured by clock. [Calendar age = today's date - date of file's timestamp; clock age = (int)((file's age in seconds) / (606024)).]	100444 4 Makefile.am 100644 3 Makefile.in 100444 4 lf.c 120777 0 top