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Socrates
Asked: 2019-02-21 07:09:35 +0800 CST

Sort order when using ll

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Is there a way to set the sort order of the files and directories when using the ll command? I have two 16.04.5 servers with two ext4 drives. One folder exists on both drives containing the same files. When using ll on both servers the sort order is not the same (ls -l has the same result):

ll on server a:

Alex.txt
iBoy.txt
Immatriculation.txt
Radius.txt
WonderWoman.txt

ll on server b:

Alex.txt
Immatriculation.txt
Radius.txt
WonderWoman.txt
iBoy.txt

So the difference is the file iBoy.txt. Is there a way to figure out why this file is not located between Alex.txt and Immatriculation.txt like on server a?

EDIT 1:

As requested, here are the locales of both systems.

locale on server a:

LANG=de_DE.UTF-8
LANGUAGE=
LC_CTYPE="de_DE.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC=de_DE.UTF-8
LC_TIME="de_DE.UTF-8"
LC_COLLATE="de_DE.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY=de_DE.UTF-8
LC_MESSAGES="de_DE.UTF-8"
LC_PAPER=de_DE.UTF-8
LC_NAME=de_DE.UTF-8
LC_ADDRESS=de_DE.UTF-8
LC_TELEPHONE=de_DE.UTF-8
LC_MEASUREMENT=de_DE.UTF-8
LC_IDENTIFICATION=de_DE.UTF-8
LC_ALL=

locale on server b:

locale: Cannot set LC_CTYPE to default locale: No such file or directory
locale: Cannot set LC_MESSAGES to default locale: No such file or directory
locale: Cannot set LC_ALL to default locale: No such file or directory
LANG=de_DE.UTF-8
LANGUAGE=
LC_CTYPE="de_DE.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC=de_DE.UTF-8
LC_TIME="de_DE.UTF-8"
LC_COLLATE="de_DE.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY=de_DE.UTF-8
LC_MESSAGES="de_DE.UTF-8"
LC_PAPER=de_DE.UTF-8
LC_NAME=de_DE.UTF-8
LC_ADDRESS=de_DE.UTF-8
LC_TELEPHONE=de_DE.UTF-8
LC_MEASUREMENT=de_DE.UTF-8
LC_IDENTIFICATION=de_DE.UTF-8
LC_ALL=
command-line ext4 directory files 16.04

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    ls' sort order is defined by your locale's collation setting. You can easily check this with the locale command:

    $ locale
LANG=en_US.UTF-8
LANGUAGE=en_US
LC_CTYPE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC=de_DE.UTF-8
LC_TIME=de_DE.UTF-8
LC_COLLATE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY=de_DE.UTF-8
LC_MESSAGES="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_PAPER=de_DE.UTF-8
LC_NAME=de_DE.UTF-8
LC_ADDRESS=de_DE.UTF-8
LC_TELEPHONE=de_DE.UTF-8
LC_MEASUREMENT=de_DE.UTF-8
LC_IDENTIFICATION=de_DE.UTF-8
LC_ALL=

    Important for sorting is the LC_COLLATE value. In my example above, it would sort according to the rules for en_US.UTF.8 localization, which would sort file names case-insensitive and seems to ignore punctuation characters.

    You can temporarily override your global settings with an environment variable. E.g. the C locale/collation would sort by the raw ASCII value, so all uppercase letters are before lowercase.

    LC_COLLATE=C ll
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