What Is the La Command?

I just mistyped ls as la. Without noticing, I ran it:

tim@Hairy:~$ la
detection.sh   output-2.jpg  output-4.jpg  output-6.jpg  output-8.jpg Test1.pdf
output-1.jpg   output-3.jpg  output-5.jpg  output-7.jpg  output-9.jpg     
tim@Hairy:~$ ls
detection.sh   output-2.jpg  output-4.jpg  output-6.jpg  output-8.jpg Test1.pdf
output-1.jpg   output-3.jpg  output-5.jpg  output-7.jpg  output-9.jpg 

What's the difference between ls and la?

8

2 Answers

From .bashrc file in your home directory, we have these aliases:

# some more ls aliases
alias ll='ls -alF'
alias la='ls -A'
alias l='ls -CF'

la is just an alias of ls with just the -A option.

From man ls

ls -alF

   -a, --all
          do not ignore entries starting with .

   -l     use a long listing format

   -F, --classify
          append indicator (one of */=>@|) to entries


ls -A

   -A, --almost-all
          do not list implied . and ..

By default la is an alias for ls -A. In contrast to just ls it doesn't omit files starting with a dot, except for . and ..

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Robert Thorne

Robert Thorne

Automotive & Future Transportation Editor

Robert Thorne covers electric vehicle innovations, autonomous driving systems, global mobility trends, and automotive engineering developments.

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