GNU bug report logs - #21218
ls -d

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Message #12 received at 21218-done <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Eric Blake <eblake <at> redhat.com>
To: "Sneeh, Eddie" <eddie.sneeh <at> roche.com>, 21218-done <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#21218: ls -d
Date: Fri, 7 Aug 2015 21:43:30 -0600

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tag 21218 notabug
thanks

On 08/07/2015 06:01 PM, Sneeh, Eddie wrote:
> Hi,
> I believe there is a problem with ls -d (unless the intent is to just list
> 1 directory).

Thanks for the report.  However, I think you have misunderstood the
purpose of -d.  Try this for comparison:

touch file
ls . file
ls -d . file

All -d does is to list command line arguments that are directories as
the name of the directory itself, rather than descending and showing the
directory's contents.

> Say I have a dir mydir, it has directories d1 and d2, and files f1 and f2.
> I want to list only d1 and d2.  How do I do that?  I tried ls -d but that
> doesn't seem to work:
> \ls -d mydir
> returns: mydir
> \ls -d mydir/*
> returns: mydir/d1 mydir/d2 mydir/f1 mydir/f2
> but f1 and f2 are files.

If you want to list ONLY directories, use a glob that guarantees only
directories can be matched:

ls -d mydir/*/

The trailing slash can only match directories, and will therefore skip
ordinary files.  Or, you can use find:

find mydir -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 2 -type d

I'm closing this as not a bug as ls is working as designed, but feel
free to ask further questions.

-- 
Eric Blake   eblake redhat com    +1-919-301-3266
Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org

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