You are probably using the Bourne Shell – its the default. /bin/sh

Try using bash, type “bash” and then it should work.
Bash is just an advanced version of sh.

ls -l --color

DOS is nothing but a very stripped down unix.

“It doesn’t tell you anything about the disk or the number of files your looking at. It makes no distinction between directories and files.”

Of course it doesn’t tell you about the disk because ‘ls’ for listing the files in a directory. if you wish to know more about the disk itself, you need to run the command to do so. du and df will do that for you. UNIX has a more powerful set of commands which are more specialized than DOS. To get ls to give you more information, you have to tell it to give you more information.

Want to know the difference between a file and a directory…

ls -l
drwx—— 2 user group 68 Jan 6 00:38 dir
-rw——- 1 user group 0 Jan 6 00:38 file

First character tells you. d = directory.
- = regular file

There are other types of special files, but I won’t go into those.

You could also do a ls -lF

drwx—— 2 user group 68 Jan 6 00:38 dir/
-rw——- 1 user group 0 Jan 6 00:38 file

You’ll notice the / after the directory name. Executable files not only will they show up with the x’s in the permissions, but they’ll have a * after the file name.

Why doesn’t ls do this by default? Fewer options asked for, less information. Seems to make sense to me. I sure wouldn’t want to ls -kjhyiuhsdftijh to have it only list the file names like you have to give the dir command in DOS.

You can also refer to the man page for a larger set of options.

dir in DOS has similar flags for sorting, for showing/hiding other information. dir in dos won’t tell you permissions, You have to use attrib, etc.

The best part about this is you don’t have to like or use UNIX. It’s all a matter of preference. Personally, its command set make a lot more sense than DOS ever did.

I actually debated whether to make mention of the shell differences, but decided not to in hopes of keeping it a little less daunting. But also figured that those newly on OS X, are most likely running 10.4.* which has been on bash all along. I know it was a different shell before 10.4 but can’t recall which at the moment.

either way, thanks for making that note in case people do get confused.

Nick mentions that tab will list all the commands that start with rm if you type ‘rm’ and hit tab. Similarly, bash also has a “tab tab” functionality for directories and files. Here’s what i mean:
say i have a folder called “foo”. In this foo folder, I have two other folders called “tests” and “testing”.

gus@~/foo$ ls -l
drwxr-xr-x 2 gus gus 68 Jan 5 10:08 testing
drwxr-xr-x 2 gus gus 68 Jan 5 10:08 tests

At the command prompt, you type “cd test” and hit tab, bash will issue a beep at you because it doesn’t know which folder to use. but if you type “cd test” and hit tab twice, bash will list the possible choices:

gus@~/foo$ cd test #hit tab twice, results in the following line:
testing tests
gus@~/foo$ cd test

I hope this makes sense and helps those new to UNIX…