From owner-freebsd-questions Fri Mar 22 13:57: 0 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from post-20.mail.nl.demon.net (post-20.mail.nl.demon.net [194.159.73.1]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2588137B4CD for ; Fri, 22 Mar 2002 13:56:19 -0800 (PST) Received: from [212.238.194.207] (helo=mailhost.raggedclown.net) by post-20.mail.nl.demon.net with esmtp (Exim 3.35 #2) id 16oX1G-0005vp-00 for questions@FreeBSD.ORG; Fri, 22 Mar 2002 21:56:18 +0000 Received: from willow.raggedclown.net (willow.raggedclown.intra [192.168.1.10]) by mailhost.raggedclown.net (Ragged Clown Mail Gateway [oz]) with ESMTP id A29F64880D for ; Fri, 22 Mar 2002 22:56:17 +0100 (CET) Received: by willow.raggedclown.net (Ragged Clown Host [willow], from userid 1005) id 0DD4D225C5; Fri, 22 Mar 2002 22:56:18 +0100 (CET) Date: Fri, 22 Mar 2002 22:56:18 +0100 From: Cliff Sarginson To: questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: How to see files in user home directory Message-ID: <20020322215618.GH4940@raggedclown.net> References: <3.0.5.32.20020321093151.011ed5f0@mail.sage-one.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <3.0.5.32.20020321093151.011ed5f0@mail.sage-one.net> User-Agent: Mutt/1.3.27i Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG You have got a lot of complicated answers to a very simple question. The guys that made Unix decided that some files in the system were not very interesting to see in an "ls" listing. They decided that files that began with a dot "." would be a convention for such boring files. These were mostly files with static content, i.e. with information that did not change very often. Unfortunately this is not always the case. KDE designers please take note. Also the home directory and it's parent "." and ".." fall under this category. So to see them you should add the "-a' flag to ls. if yoou are the root user, some nutcase decided you would always want to see these boring files. So you dont need the -a then. -- Regards Cliff Sarginson -- To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message