GNU ls for Microsoft Windows

ls (also called msls) is a console utility that lists information on Windows files. It is based on the GNU/Linux ls directory information utility. It displays exhaustive information on Windows files including DACLs/SACLs, integrity levels, reparse points, shortcuts, hard links, symbolic links, hidden streams, encryption, compaction, virtualization, object tracking identifier, and offline status.

Files are shown in different colors based on their type:

An example of the output:

> ls -l
total 158
-ra--a----  1 Alan   68032 Jan 28 17:59 append-only.dat
crw-rw-rw-  1 Alan    3423 Jan 29 04:41 compressed
drwxrwxrwx  1 Alan       0 Jan 27 09:57 dir
-rwE------  1 Alan      15 Jan 27 00:53 encrypted
-rw-r-----$ 1 Alan       5 Jan 24 08:13 file
-rw-r-----$ 1 Alan       5 Jan 24 08:13 file:secret:$DATA
-rw-rw-rw-  1 Alan   40960 Jan 21 02:54 movie.mpg
-rw------O  1 Alan   32254 Jan 11 12:55 offline.dat
-rwxrwxr-x  1 Alan      10 Jan 29 00:47 prog.exe
-rw-r--r--  1 Ginger   434 Jan 31 18:05 recent
Srw-------  1 Ginger 32254 Jan 11 12:55 sparse-file.dat
lrw-rw-rw-  1 Ginger     0 Jan 12 09:32 x-broken.lnk

ls uses the native Windows API to get the fastest possible performance. You can view all the files in \Windows\System32\* (several thousand files) over a network LAN in just a few seconds.

ls can be customized to change colors, verbosity, layout, sorting, annotation, and level of detail.

See the documentation for details.

Compatible Platforms

Download

Download ls

Download the source code.

See Also

See also URecover for Windows Backup and UMove for Active Directory.