I have a file that contains "ls -la" output. I would like to display only the filenames, none of the other information before it such as permissions, ownership, size, and date.
Would the cut command be the best way to hit this, or should I use Vim or sed?

Thanks.

You mean like:

what's wrong with

You need every filename on a separate line?

1 members found this post helpful.

That's close, but the ls -la output is already in a file. So I just want to run awk against that file and strip out everything before the filename (the 9th field) on each line.
Edit: Looks like this will work: awk '{print $9}' file > newfile

It will if you happen not to have any files with spaces in
their names.... otherwise a slightly more convoluted approach
may work:

Cheers,
Tink

Gosh, if you don't need the other stuff but just the file names, just do ??

Cheers,
Tink

i was looking at his first post.
then the better way to solve this (if possible) is to go to the source and change ls -la to ls -a.

I very much liked Tinkster's method using awk. In my case, I needed to eliminate "symlinks" from the list of files, and then store the filename only in a file used by "tar" to create an archive. I'm already at the directory I wish to "tar", so all I had to do was this:

ls -l | grep -v '^l' | awk '{$1=$2=$3=$4=$5=$6=$7=$8="";print $0}' | xargs -L1 | grep -v '^$' >/tmp/xfiles

I then used /tmp/xfiles as the tar-control file for creating the tar-file. The initial grep eliminates the symlinks, and the final grep eliminates any empty lines, such as those created at the start of the "ls -l" output. I didn't need to use the -a option. That would have taken more work to clean up the file list.

Lastly, I should elaborate on the "symlink" problem. In Linux (Ubuntu), it's possible to have a lower-case or mixed-case symlink to an all-UPPER-case filename, in the same directory. Creating a tar-file from that directory, and moving it to a Mac-system ends up with a file you can't unzip because Macs are case-blind when it comes to filenames, so the original file AND the symlink created a conflict which makes it virtually impossible to unzip the zip-file. Therefore, I had to eliminate the conflicting symlink while making the zip-file.

in general you must not use grep|awk|sed|grep (or similar) chains, it can be usually solved by a single awk/perl/python/whatever script.
In your case for example:
so in general you can try something like this:

With shell built-ins
A space in the filename is no problem.

The suggestion from pan64 fails in two ways: 1) it leaves a blank line caused by the "Total xxxxx" at the start of "ls -l", and 2) it only captures the first non-blank portion of filenames with embedded blanks.

The suggestion from MadeInGermany is clever, if what's in 'file' is the output from "ls -l". It reads the first eight parts and discards them, and leaves me with whats left, but it also leaves me with a blank line from "Total xxxxx".

What I need to save is the complete filename following the first eight fields in "ls -l", with no leading blanks and no blank lines. I need to use "ls -l" to eliminate "symlinks" with "grep -v '^l'", then extract the complete filenames. MadeInGermany came close, but I can't hand the 'file' to 'tar'.

I did not want to give you a full solution (and actually I do not know what do you really need), but I gave you an idea which can be easily extended to fulfil all your needs.

Probably you do not understand it, but it does make sense. file actually is a file, especially this is the file you were talking about and the tip he gave will print the filenames.

So you have got 2 ideas to improve

I edited my 5:44pm post from yesterday, and added more explanation at 7:13am today. Anyone interested should revisit.

this is very confusing; you're disrupting the flow of the thread.
if you have something to add, please add it below this post.

Given its already in a file, I'd do it in vim, but then I'm just crazy enough to enjoy that sort of thing