UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

I suppose you could achieve the effect by grouping like files in directories, though I personally would avoid using the "#" character in a directory name. Whether moving files is an option remains to be defined.

The sample input and output posted so far is too small to define a general rule to filter a directory listing.

Total commander will do this one the Windows side; I think there's a Mac version called Mu(?) commander, which is a port of that software.

I believe After Effects will show you sequences like this, as will Nuke, which I mentioned before.

I know there are some more, but I can't think of them off the top of my head.

methyl: the '#" symbol could be anything, I wouldn't take it as gospel. I wasn't trying to generate a rule set for displaying all cases (I imagine this would be a pretty big list of cases). I was just providing an example of the type of behavior I was looking for.

Guessing reliably when files are sequences and when they are not is no simple task with all the different ways files get labelled. When you see file32, should it expect a file01-fileXX, file05-fileXXX, file1-fileXXX, file5-fileXXX, or file00-fileXX, or... And should this be ambiguous, what should it default to? Always leading zeroes, always no leading zeroes, always the most digits, always clean sequences, the sequences with the longest run of files...

I haven't found a method yet that doesn't generate false positives and negatives, hence why I doubt it would get built into ls if someone did, since ls is supposed to produce clear, accurate information.