Okay guys, this is an experimental question warning!
I often confuse cat
and ls
when quickly working on the console. Not because I forget their meanings, no. Just because I type without deeply thinking about the command - it just comes automatically. I am sure everyone knows what I am trying to explain: you don't have to think what to type if your task is to list, say, a text file - or a directory.
Now, why two different commands? Things would be more fluently if there was a command that lists a directory if the target is a directory and that lists the content of a file if the target is a file.
Does such a command exist?
I know there are editors (e. g. vim
) with the ability to list a directory. But this is not what I want, as I want to stay on the console. Second, after opening a file through the vim
directory listing there is no way back - at least none that I know.
If there is no out-of-the-box solution I will try to make a small bash script (wrapper) to cat
and ls
. But this is not preferred, because when working with many different systems it has to be placed on each of them...
Simply put this function is your
.bashrc
:It will
cat
regular files but callls
for directoriesHate to necrobump and unable to just comment; but fix for when nothing is passed.