[tooltower]

I have a very dumb question: why does the article use `find` with `printf` and depth specification, as opposed to the simpler `ls -a`? I'm assuming it has something to do with portability, but `ls -a` is already in POSIX. I'm a bit confused.

[johnchristopher]

Hmm. I think it's because `ls -a` will not visually differentiate between files and folders and will also show `.`and `..`. and will span contents over columns while find will return a line by found items.

Or they are a show-off.

[lovelymono]

They could have used

  ls -A -1 -p

which should result in the same output.

-A is like -a but will not print . and .. directories.

-1 prints one file per line.

-p appends / to directories.

There's a lot more flags in the man page: https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/ls.1.html

[yjftsjthsd-h]

That's GNU ls; AFAICT -1 and -p aren't POSIX so might not work on other unix-likes (most prominently Darwin, but also the BSDs)

[lovelymono]

https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009696899/utilities/ls... lists both -p and -1. And while -p is marked as an XSI extension, both Darwin and all modern BSD distributions implement it.

[yjftsjthsd-h]

Huh, good catch. Not sure why `man 1p ls` didn't give me that:\

[yesco]

https://mywiki.wooledge.org/ParsingLs