Listing Files & Directories (ls)

Command Equivalents

Description

Get-ChildItem is the PowerShell cmdlet for listing the contents of a directory. While its alias ls makes it feel familiar, it is fundamentally more powerful because it returns a collection of FileInfo and DirectoryInfo objects, which you can then filter, sort, or pass down the pipeline.

Common Usage

Basic Listing

Running ls by itself lists the items in the current directory.

ls

Listing Hidden Files

To include hidden and system files, similar to ls -a in Linux, use the -Force parameter.

# Show all items, including hidden ones
ls -Force

Recursive Listing

To list the contents of the current directory and all of its subdirectories, similar to ls -R, use the -Recurse parameter.

# List all files and folders recursively
ls -Recurse

Filtering the List

While you can pipe the output of ls to Where-Object, a more efficient method for simple pattern matching is to use the -Filter parameter.

# List only files ending with the .log extension
ls -Filter "*.log"

Listing Only Directories or Files

You can specifically request only directories or only files by using the -Directory or -File switches.

# List only the directories in the current location
ls -Directory

# List only the files in the current location
ls -File