How to show only hidden files in Terminal?

Question

I have a directory that contains thousands of files, some of which are hidden.

The command ls -a lists all files, including hidden ones, but I need to just list hidden files.

What command should I use?

Answer 1

This command will list only hidden files:

ls -ld .?* 

Explanation:

 -l     use a long listing format
-d, --directory
              list  directory entries instead of contents, and do not derefer‐
              ence symbolic links
.?* will only state hidden files 

Answer 2

ls -d .!(|.)

Does exactly what OP is looking for .

Answer 3

If you just want the files in your current directory (no recursion), you could do

echo .[^.]*

That will print the names of all files whose name starts with a . and is followed by one or more non-dot characters. Note that this will fail for files whose name starts with consecutive dots, so for example ....foo will not be shown.

You could also use find:

find -mindepth 1 -prune -name '.*'

The -mindepth ensures we don't match . and the -prune means that find won't descend into subdirectories.

Answer 4

ls -ad .*

works for me in Bash.

Answer 5

Using find and awk,

find . -type f | awk -F"/" '$NF ~ /^\..*$/ {print $NF}'

Explanation:

find . -type f --> List all the files in the current directory along with it's path like,

./foo.html
./bar.html
./.foo1

awk -F"/" '$NF ~ /^\..*$/ {print $NF}'

/ as field separator awk checks for the last field staring with a dot or not. If it starts with a dot, then it prints the last field of that corresponding line.

Answer 6

find is usually a better option for complicated searches than using name globbing.

find . -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 -name '.*'

or

find . -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 -name '.*' -o -name '*~'

find . searches current directory

-mindepth 1 excludes . and .. from the list

-maxdepth 1 limits the search to the current directory

-name '.*' find file names that start with a dot

-o or

-name '*~' find file names that end with a tilde (usually, these are backup files from text editing programs)

However, this and all of the other answers miss files that are in the current directory's .hidden file. If you are writing a script, then these lines will read the .hidden file and display the file names of those that exist.

if [[ -f .hidden]] # if '.hidden' exists and is a file
then
    while read filename # read file name from line
    do
        if [[ -e "$filename" ]] # if the read file name exists
        then
            echo "$filename" # print it
        fi
    done < .hidden # read from .hidden file
fi

Answer 7

Approach 1: ls -d .{[!.],.?}*

Explain: I want to exclude . and .. but include file such as ..i_am_also_a_hidden_file.txt

1. ls -d .* undesirably shows . and ..
2. ls -d .?* (the current accepted answer) undesirably shows ..
3. ls -d .[!.]* undesirably will not show ..i_am_also_a_hidden_file.txt
4. ls -d .{[!.],.?}* is the answer

Approach 2: ls -A | grep "\\."

I personally like this way better

Answer 8

I think that you can do it with following command.

ls -a | grep "^\." | grep -v "^\.$" | grep -v "^\..$"

ls -a command you entered, that shows all files and directories in current working directory.

grep "^\." command I appended, that filters output to shows only hidden files(It's name starts with ".").

grep -v "^\.$" | grep -v "^\..$" command I appended, that filters output to exclude ., ..(They are current and parent directory).

If some filenames can have more than a line with "\n", above example could be incorrect.

So I suggest following command to solve it issue.

find -maxdepth 1 -name ".[!.]*"

Answer 9

What else you could have done, is ls .?* Or ls .!(|) that will show you everything in the current dir hidden files/dirs on the top and other files/dirs below

e.g: from my terminal

$ ls .?*       
.bash_history    .dmrc        .macromedia   .weather
.bash_logout     .gksu.lock   .profile      .wgetrc
.bash_profile    .bashrc.save .ICEauthority .toprc           .Xauthority
.bashrc          .lastdir     .viminfo      .xsession-errors
.bashrc~         .dircolors   .lynxrc       .vimrc           .xsession-errors.old

..:
Baron

.adobe:
Flash_Player

.aptitude:
cache  config

.cache:
compizconfig-1                              rhythmbox
dconf                                       shotwell

Now notice in the above results, it shows you every file/dir with its subdir and any hidden files right below.

[1:0:248][ebaron@37signals:pts/4][~/Desktop]
$ ls .!(|)
.bash_aliases  .bashrc1  .bashrc1~

..:
askapache-bash-profile.txt  examples.desktop             Public           top-1m.csv
backups             Firefox_wallpaper.png        PycharmProjects          top-1m.csv.zip
Desktop             java_error_in_PYCHARM_17581.log  Shotwell Import Log.txt  topsites.txt
Documents           Music                Templates            Videos
Downloads           Pictures                 texput.log           vmware

Sorry, I cannot comment. to explain the difference here between ls .?* and @cioby23 answer ls -d .[!.]* .??* And why it is actually printing hidden files twice is because literally you're asking twice .??*, .?*, .[!.]* they're the same thing, so adding any of them with different command characters will print twice.

Answer 10

All the answers so far are based on the fact that files (or directories) which names start with a dot are "hidden". I came up with another solution, that might not be as efficient, but this solution does not assume anything about the names of the hidden files, and therefore avoids listing .. in the result (as does the currently accepted answer).

The full command is:

ls -d $(echo -e "$(\ls)\n$(\ls -A)" | sort | uniq -u)

Explanation

What this does is list all the files (and directories) twice,

echo -e "$(\ls)\n$(\ls -A)"

but only showing hidden files once -A.

Then the list is sorted | sort which makes regular (unhidden) files appear twice and next to each other.

Then, remove all lines that appear more than once | uniq -u, only leaving unique lines.

Finally use ls again to list all the files with the user's custom options and without listing the contents of the directories in the list -d.

EDIT (Limitations):

As muru pointed out, this solution will not work correctly if there are files with names such as escaped\ncharacter.txt because echo -e will split the filename into two lines. It will also not work as expected if there are two hidden files with almost the same name except for a special character, such as .foo[tab].txt and .foo[new-line].txt as both of those are printed as .foo?.txt and would be eliminated by uniq -u

Answer 11

With bash, setting the GLOBIGNORE special variable is some non-empty value is enough to make it ignore . and .. when expanding globs. From the Bash docs:

The GLOBIGNORE shell variable may be used to restrict the set of filenames matching a pattern. If GLOBIGNORE is set, each matching filename that also matches one of the patterns in GLOBIGNORE is removed from the list of matches. If the nocaseglob option is set, the matching against the patterns in GLOBIGNORE is performed without regard to case. The filenames . and .. are always ignored when GLOBIGNORE is set and not null. However, setting GLOBIGNORE to a non-null value has the effect of enabling the dotglob shell option, so all other filenames beginning with a ‘.’ will match.

If we set it to .:.., both . and .. will be ignored. Since setting it to anything non-null will also get this behaviour, we might as well set it to just .

So:

GLOBIGNORE=.
ls -d .*

Answer 12

Alternatively, you can also use echo .*

e.g.

user@linux:~$ echo .*
. .. .bash_aliases .bash_history .bash_logout .bashrc
user@linux:~$

If you prefer it in long list format, just convert the white space to a new line.

user@linux:~$ echo .* | tr ' ' '\n'
.
..
.bash_aliases
.bash_history
.bash_logout
.bashrc
user@linux:~$ 

Answer 13

You can also use:

ls -d .[!.]* .??*

This will allow you to display normal hidden files and hidden files which begin with 2 or 3 dots for example : ..hidden_file

Answer 14

you can use the command

ls -Ad .??*

This has the advantage of allowing multi-column listing, unlike the grep-based approach in the ls -a | grep "^\." solutions

Answer 15

To list all hidden files and folders:

ls -ld .*

To list hidden files only:

ls -ld .*|grep -v ^d

To list hidden folders only:

ls -ld .*|grep ^d

Answer 16

You can also use process substitution

 diff <(ls -1A) <(ls -1)

Explanation:

Piping the stdout of a command into the stdin of another is a powerful technique. But, what if you need to pipe the stdout of multiple commands? This is where process substitution comes in. Process substitution feeds the output of a process (or processes) into the stdin of another process

Cited from here

So you are piping two outputs into the diff command.

The first command is "ls -1A". The "-A" flag works like the "-a" flag, but it does not show you "." and "..". So it basically shows you all the files and directories (both hidden and not-hidden) in a directory. The "-1" flag displays the output of "ls" one below the other vertically and not in a horizontal list.

Answer 17

I don't like -d because it only shows no matches found if there are no matches.

It also does not show total [size] at top of lines.

I think ls -lA --ignore "[^\.]*" is a better solution.

Answer 18

ls -A | grep "^\."

• ls -A lists all files (hidden and non-hidden)
• grep "^\." filter apart the ones starting with a dot

Answer 19

Thanks for all the tips on here!

Here's a function for your .bash_aliases file that handles no command arguments, doesn't throw errors on directories without hidden files, appends / on listed directories, and outputs to a single column.

lsa () {
# Exit codes with/without argument are 0 if no hidden files present
EXIT=$(ls -1d .!(|.) |& grep -q "No such file"; echo $?)
EXIT_ARG=$(cd $1; ls -1d .!(|.) |& grep -q "No such file"; echo $?)

# If no argument
if [ $# -eq 0 ]; then
    if [ $EXIT -eq 0 ]; then
        printf ""
    else
        ls -1dp .!(|.)
    fi

# If argument
else
    if [ $EXIT_ARG -eq 0 ]; then
        printf ""
    else
        (cd $1; ls -1dp .!(|.))
    fi
fi

}

Answer 20

A long list of answers, let's add one more, which doesn't seem to be included:

$ ls -lA | grep ' \.'

The -A option to ls includes all hidden files, except . and ...
grep, as used above finds . (space, dot) and filters away lines that do not have that.

$ ls -lA | grep -E '^d.* \.
... lists only dirs.

$ ls -lA | grep -Ev '^d.*' | grep ' \.'
... lists only files.

... and that last can be used as alternative for files-only
$ ls -lA | grep -E '^d.*' | grep ' \.'
just remove the -v flag on grep

Answer 21

The code below only shows hidden files:

ls -A | grep "^\."

or

ls -ap | grep -v / | grep "^\."

Answer 22

Follow steps from their official github: https://gist.github.com/barnes7td/3804534

Setup Terminal for Sublime Shorcut subl: Open terminal and type:

1. Create a directory at ~/bin:

   mkdir ~/bin
   

2. Copy sublime executable to your ~/bin directory:

   ln -s "/Applications/Sublime Text.app/Contents/SharedSupport/bin/subl" ~/bin/subl
   

BASH (Mac OS default)

Use these instructions unless you know you have zsh

3. If using bash (Mac OS default) add line to ~/.bash_profile file:

   echo 'export PATH=$PATH:$HOME/bin' >> ~/.bash_profile
   

4. Set sublime as your default editor

   echo "export EDITOR='subl -w'" >> ~/.bash_profile
   

ZSH

If you don't know what zsh is you don't have it.

3. If using zsh add line to ~/.zshrc file:

   echo 'export PATH=$PATH:$HOME/bin' >> ~/.zshrc
   

4. Set sublime as your default editor

   echo "export EDITOR='subl -w'" >> ~/.zshrc
   

5. Restart terminal and type:

   subl .
   

   Sublime should open up in the current directory.

6. Check unix commands:

   ls 
   

   You should get a directory listing.

Windows

Put the C:\Program Files\Sublime Text 2 in your PATH.

Create a subl.bat file and save it in the directory: C:\Program Files\Sublime Text 2

Inside the file put:

start sublime_text.exe %*

Answer 23

You can use the command

ls -pa | grep -v /

Explanation of flags:

• -p will append "/" indicator to directories
• -a will list hidden files
• grep -v / commands will return the lines that do not contain a slash.

Answer 24

You could also install the much friendlier Rust version of ls: exa. Then use the following to get a much nicer tree visualization of all the files:

exa -Ta

If you really end up liking exa like me, you can override ls with an alias on your .bashrc: alias ls="exa".

Answer 25

You can use grep:

ls -a | grep '^\.'