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Accepted
Henrik R.
Asked: 2022-09-23 21:20:44 +0800 CST

Why does "ls --all --recursive -1 *.htm*" only list files in current directory?

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In Terminal I do this command:

ls --all --recursive -1 *.htm*

or this:

ls -a -R -1 *.htm*

But it only lists the html-files in the current directory...?!

According to 'man ls' that option has this function:

       -R, --recursive
              list subdirectories recursively

I know from Krusader Search that there are about 40 html-files in the sub-folders... But why will 'ls' not list them?

I might add that I just discovered that the following command does the job:

find . -name '*.htm*'
command-line

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    It works slightly different than you expect. ls will list the files and directories that you specify on the command line. With the -R or --recursive option, it will go into any directory that is specified on the command line.

    You do not have directories that match *.htm* in the current directory, only files. Therefore, only the matching files are listed.

    find is probably the most suited tool to find files recursively, but it could also be done with ls -R and grep:

    ls -R | grep -E '\.htm.*$'

    grepis used here with a regular expression.

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