How to paginate in the 'LS' command?
 

Ok - newbie here... But I can't seem to find any way to make the 'ls' command do a 'paginate' function. Like doing 'dir /p' in DOS. It's a way of viewing a large bunch of files a page (screen) at a time.

I know there's GOTTA be a way to do this - but I can't find it! I'm working from the Linux commandline to copy some files to floppy from the /etc folder. There are LOTS of files in /etc...

Why am I doing this? Because there's a problem with copying files to floppy from inside any GUI on my Linux box. I can only copy to floppy at the CLI right now. See my other posts for the details.

Thanks!

ls | less

Uh, close. 'ls | less' gives a 1 line at a time display in a single column. Better than nothing.

But what I want is a multiple column display, that scrolls one screen at a time. Is that possible?

try `ls -C | more`

Tried that too. Gave me a single column of files that I could scroll down, same as the first command did.

Try man ls - that will give you the options/switches to use with 'ls'.

You could try ls -m | less

I don't understand what's wrong with the choices being given to you. 'ls | less' works just like 'dir /p'. For multiple columns, use Use:

spacebar or pagedown - to scroll down one screen
pageup - to scroll up one screen
arrow keys - to move up and down the screen

'man less' for others.

or you can try

I have the same trouble!
 

And none of your advices doesn't work... :cry:


UPD: IT WAS ONLY LONG FILE NAMES!!!!!!!!! me lol
:newbie: :banghead: :redface:

The output from ls is slightly odd and it seems to depend on the number of files as to how it's treated. If you do ls -C in a large directory you may see multi-column output then you do ls -C > out.txt and it will be line by line. This is on AIX 5.1.