How to list only files and not directories of a directory Bash?

Question

How can I list all the files of one folder but not their folders or subfiles. In other words: How can I list only the files?

Answer 1

• carlpett's find-based answer (find . -maxdepth 1 -type f) works in principle, but is not quite the same as using ls: you get a potentially unsorted list of filenames all prefixed with ./, and you lose the ability to apply ls's many options;
  also find invariably finds hidden items too, whereas ls' behavior depends on the presence or absence of the -a or -A options.

  • An improvement, suggested by Alex Hall in a comment on the question is to combine shell globbing with find:

        find * -maxdepth 0 -type f  # find -L * ... includes symlinks to files
    

    • However, while this addresses the prefix problem and gives you alphabetically sorted output, you still have neither (inline) control over inclusion of hidden items nor access to ls's many other sorting / output-format options.

• Hans Roggeman's ls + grep answer is pragmatic, but locks you into using long (-l) output format.

---

To address these limitations I wrote the fls (filtering ls) utility,

• a utility that provides the output flexibility of ls while also providing type-filtering capability,
• simply by placing type-filtering characters such as f for files, d for directories, and l for symlinks before a list of ls arguments (run fls --help or fls --man to learn more).

Examples:

fls f        # list all files in current dir.
fls d -tA ~  #  list dirs. in home dir., including hidden ones, most recent first
fls f^l /usr/local/bin/c* # List matches that are files, but not (^) symlinks (l)

---

Installation

Supported platforms

• When installing from the npm registry: Linux and macOS
• When installing manually: any Unix-like platform with Bash

From the npm registry

^{Note: Even if you don't use Node.js, its package manager, npm, works across platforms and is easy to install; try
curl -L https://git.io/n-install | bash}

With Node.js installed, install as follows:

[sudo] npm install fls -g

Note:

• Whether you need sudo depends on how you installed Node.js / io.js and whether you've changed permissions later; if you get an EACCES error, try again with sudo.

• The -g ensures global installation and is needed to put fls in your system's $PATH.

Manual installation

• Download this bash script as fls.
• Make it executable with chmod +x fls.
• Move it or symlink it to a folder in your $PATH, such as /usr/local/bin (macOS) or /usr/bin (Linux).