[PLUG] ls -d does not work as it should

[King Beowulf]

On 06/25/2018 05:08 PM, Michael Rasmussen wrote:
> On 2018-06-25 16:18, Steve Christiansen wrote:
>> On 6/25/2018 3:52 PM, Rich Shepard wrote:
>>
>>> According to 'man ls' the -d option should 'list directories
>>> themselves, not their
>>> contents'. But, here it doesn't work. For example from within ~/:
>>>
>>> $ ls -d
>>> ./
>>>
>>> $ ls --directory
>>> ./
>>>
>>>   I doubt this is a Slackware issue and I'm curious why it might not be
>>> working as expected. Has anyone else run into this issue?
>>>
>>> Rich
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> PLUG mailing list
>>> PLUG at pdxlinux.org
>>> http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
>>>
>>
>> Rich,
>> It's working as expected.
>> "ls" with no arguments lists the contents of the current directory.
>> "ls -d" with no other arguments lists the current directory, not its
>> contents, which is of course "."
> 
> To expand that on that correct response,
> 
> try ls -d */
> 
> for an edited example:
> michael$ ls -d */
> Documents
> Downloads
> Finance
> Pictures
>   ...
> 
> 
> 

Rich,

Indeed, another unfortunate example of bad documentation grammar.
programmers are historically poor at this.

"list directories themselves, not their contents" talks about the
directory you are in, not the directories _below_ the one you are in
(i.e. contents).

So I would write the description as
"list the current directory, not its contents"

"ls -l" assumes "ls -l ."
so
"ls -d" assumes ls -d ."

ls [OPTION]... [FILE]...

the [FILE] is not really optional!  We tend to forget about "." and ".."

As per Michael above, if you what the directory "contents" of where you are:
ls -d *      # assumes "./*"
ls -d */     # assumes "./*"
ls -d $PWD   # expanded "."
ls -d $PWD/*

0r

ls -d <path-to-directory>/*

-Ed

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