AIX

Hi,

Can anyone suggest me how can I display the output of ls command in single line with some delimiter say pipe (|)?

I know it can be done by writing a script by using the loops but I wanted to know are there any other single line commands?

Thanks for your help
Sheshadri

If you have GNU ls, try:

Code:

ls -m

The command writes the file listing separated by commas. Otherwise:

Code:

ls -1 | awk '{ ORS="|"; print; }'

The -1 option serves no purpose here.

Code:

printf "%s|" *

Wow reborg

Very cool solution!

Thank you guys.

This is great
ls file* | awk '{ ORS="|"; print; }'

But what if you want to put something in between?
For example:
file1|<filler1>|file2|<filler2>|file3|<filler3>|file4....

Thanks.

reborg wrote about eras usage of "ls -1":

This is a common misunderstanding about "ls". Because "ls" output has several columns when displayed on a screen one would assume that the same is the case when the output goes into a pipe. In fact "ls" determines if its output goes to a terminal or not and formats its output in columns or not. This can easily be demonstrated by issuing "ls > /some/file ; cat /some/file", which will show the same output as "ls -1" (to the screen), whereas "ls" (to the screen) will look different.

(source: the AIX manpage of ls tells about this rather counter-intuitive behavior of ls)

bakunin