(linux terminal question) Is it possible to add a comment, note or description next to a file or directory?

etaloot · 07-31-2016, 12:10 AM

Quote:

by the way.. my question is relating to linux terminal, not X/GUI file manager.

Hey there, I was just organizing some files on my system in linux terminal and was thinking.. wouldn't it be cool if I could add a brief description of what is in each folder in this directory or a desciption of each file in the directory when listing via ls? Would be very helpful because most of the time a directory or filename is so random or abbreviated that when you come back to it at a later date you have no idea what it is without opening it up and examining it.

So anyways.. thought I would ask on these forums. Please see below for an example of what I'm asking:

Code:

root@example:/testing# 
total 16
drwxr-xr-x 3 root 4096 Jul 30 21:47 ./
drwxr-xr-x 7 root 4096 Jul 30 21:43 ../
drwxr-xr-x 3 root 4096 Jul 30 21:45 my_folder/    # downloaded files
-rw-r--r-- 1 root 1234 Jul 30 21:47 my_file.txt    # list of websites
root@example:/testing#

Any ideas or help would be greatly appreciated, thanks much!! ;>

-Nick

Michael Uplawski · 07-31-2016, 02:33 AM

The sunshine is beautiful this morning, I started my day eating some of the raspberries that remained after my wife has had her conserving rage and now I read this intriguing idea. I had to look up the word “intriguing”.., but anyway.

No.

There is currently no way to do what you ask for. But what a nice programming exercise this would be!
Other such realizations often bear a major flaw: The descriptions must be provided and maintained. And you must decide beforehand about the “granularity” of the information that you seek to convey.

But many file types on a Linux system are already covered and their description is found in arbitrary places, like in the magic files or just inside the file for picture formats, PDF- and many office-formats (as long as you do not care to “clean” this information away).

An alternative ls-command may not be equally useful for everybody or not in many situations. But I kind of like the idea...
And directories are like the cream on the cake (complete with the cherry): Imagine a nice way to concatenate and condense the file-information from the list of directory-entries.

One clumsy work-around:

Code:

user@machine:~$ for f in `ls`; do if test -f "$f";then file "$f"; fi; done

Edit: No. Not even clumsy. This may actually be the base for a downright shell-script solution and a good reason to keep the magic file up to date. Here is one contribution from me:

Code:

0     string  MV\x00\xFF\x0c\x00\x0e\x00
>8   string  \x19                      TextMaker 2016
>8   string  \x17                      TextMaker 2012
>8   string  \x13                      TextMaker 2006
>8   string  \x08                      TextMaker 2002
>>9 string  \x00\x03\x00-YA1   SoftMaker Office Document (before ~2015)

chrism01 · 08-03-2016, 06:29 AM

This is where you realise why its important to use meaningful dir & file names and also to use a logical structure/layout for a dir tree..
Another std trick is to add a README file to a dir if necessary.

Also

Quote:

Linux has a maximum filename length of 255 characters for most filesystems (including EXT4), and a maximum path of 4096 characters.

https://unix.stackexchange.com/quest...-with-ecryptfs, so no excuse for not using meaningful names.

ondoho · 08-04-2016, 01:25 PM

just one addition to all those valid answers:
if you need extra info for img123456.jpg, you can do this:

Code:

echo "extra info" > img123456

sometimes i also add a simple bookmark:

Code:

touch img123456