I would be very happy (after a lot of fruitless searching) if someone could explain the meaning of these variations on the ls command:

ls */
ls */.
ls */./

I understand the basic use of ls already eg ls -al but am wanting to list from different points in the file structure without having to leave the directory I am in and my experimenting has left me confused.

Also in the examples above what is the correct term for the characters after the "ls"? Are they correctly called operators? Or is that the wrong term?

Thanks.

The characters ? (question mark) and * (asterisk) are called wildcards.

The asterisk represents zero or more characters.

$ ls
doc_1.txt  doc2.txt  f1.csv  f2.csv  fl3.csv  pic_1.jpg  pic_2.jpg

$ ls *.txt
doc_1.txt  doc2.txt

$ ls
doc_1.txt  doc2.txt  f1.csv  f2.csv  fl3.csv  pic_1.jpg  pic_2.jpg

$ ls ???.csv
fl3.csv

Thanks - that helps a lot.

So how does" */./" differ from "*/." ? I seem to get slightly different results with each and still can't quite see why.

Also I understand that * and ? are called wildcards. But what are . .. and / called?

The pathname pattern * expands to the list of files in the current directory whose names do not have a period ( . ) as the first character in their name.

The pathname pattern */ expands to the list of directories in the current directory whose names do not have a period as the first character in their name. (Note that a directory is one type of file. Other types of files found on all UNIX and Linux systems include regular files, block special files, character special files, sockets, named pipes (AKA FIFO special files), and symbolic links. Most UNIX and Linux systems have more file types.)

The pathname pattern */. expands to the list of files named . (AKA dot in this context) in the directories named by the expansion of */ .

The pathname pattern */./ expands to the list of files of type directory named . in the directories named by the expansion of */ .

The pathname patterns */ , */. and */./ expand to the same list of files since dot is always a name of the directory in which it is located (unless the filesystem has been corrupted), but they cannot always be treated as synonyms. For example the command:

rmdir */

rmdir */.

Thank you!! That is the best answer I have ever seen to any question in any forum in ten years. I hope as many people as possible see your answer and learn from it.