How to have Linux ls command show second in time stamp

Question

Something annoying about ls -l command is it shows only hour and minute for a file(like 08:30). How can I see the second portion(like 08:30:44)?

man 1 ls and search for 'second' does not give any clue.

These days `ls -l` shows second...for even higher granularity see some of the answers here... :") — rogerdpack, Jun 30 '21 at 16:57
And for old files it shows the year, and not either the hour or minute! — nealmcb, May 31 '23 at 01:16

score 302 · Accepted Answer · edited Nov 09 '11 at 02:15

302

Does your version of ls support the --time-style option? If so:

ls -la --time-style=full-iso blah

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 2011-11-08 18:02:08.954092000 -0700 blah

edited Nov 09 '11 at 02:15

Gaff

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answered Nov 09 '11 at 01:02

matt

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Yes, thanks, even on a old Mandrake Linux 10.0 from year 2005. --full-time OK as well. – Jimm Chen Nov 09 '11 at 02:08
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or "ls -ale" (only this worked for me on an older linux distro) – mBardos Jul 20 '16 at 13:02
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Mac OSX equivalent: `ls -lT` – MarkHu Jan 25 '17 at 00:49
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What is the difference between `--time-style=full` and `--time-style=full-iso`? – neverMind9 Jun 10 '19 at 14:51
@neverMind9 That's the same. You can even use `--time-style=f` for the same effect. `full-iso` is the full name, other unambiguous short names can also be used. *The TIME_STYLE argument can be full-iso, long-iso, iso, locale, or +FORMAT.* – pallxk Jul 23 '20 at 07:42
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Now we can clearly see that after all these years ssh/sshfs STILL doesn't support sub-second time stamps! https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=971645 – CR. Aug 26 '21 at 22:48

zhouji · Answer 2 · 2016-05-02T01:04:01.570

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The more simple way is:

ls --full-time

which is equal to

ls -l --time-style=full-iso

If you want to show entries as hidden files starting with ., add -a:

ls --full-time -a

edited May 02 '16 at 01:04

answered Oct 10 '15 at 09:13

zhouji

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What is the difference between `--time-style=full` and `--time-style=full-iso`? – neverMind9 Jun 10 '19 at 14:50
@neverMind9 There is no difference. The value is internaly expanded from `full` to `full-iso`. Same happens e.g. to `f`. It does not work for `l` or `lo`, because they could be `long-iso` or `locale`. But `lon` will expand to `long-iso` – huha Aug 11 '22 at 08:30

score 51 · Answer 3 · answered Nov 12 '15 at 00:44

51

For OS X, it looks like the best you get is:

ls -l -T

From the ls(1) manpage on 10.10.5:

-T When used with the -l (lowercase letter ``ell'') option, display complete time information for the file, including month, day, hour, minute, second, and year.

answered Nov 12 '15 at 00:44

natevw

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Or like this: `ls -lT`. – jox Jun 08 '17 at 21:19
this also works in Windows/Ubuntu – Michael Jul 22 '17 at 17:11
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You may want to take a closer look at that man page, specifically the `-D` option which was inherited from BSD and has been there forever. – miken32 Apr 09 '23 at 16:13

score 27 · Answer 4 · answered Jul 25 '14 at 21:28

27

An alternative to the approved answer - you can use a custom format like in the date command if "--time-style=full-iso" output is too detailed for you:

ls -l --time-style=+"%b %d %Y %H:%M:%S" blah
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root root 0 Feb 03 2014 01:13:01 blah

answered Jul 25 '14 at 21:28

gensec

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score 4 · Answer 5 · edited Feb 17 '22 at 15:26

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On BusyBox systems, ls -e works fine!

edited Feb 17 '22 at 15:26

HeySora

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answered Nov 10 '14 at 09:50

AsynKc

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Which version of GNU coreutils do you use? With 8.20 I don't have this parameter. – sebix Nov 29 '14 at 11:36
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Version please :) – hakre Aug 06 '15 at 07:31
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When using GNU coreutils 8.22 `ls` there is no `-e` option. I suspect the version of `ls` you have is Darwin based. – Elijah Lynn Aug 21 '16 at 11:09
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BusyBox. Embedded Linuxes. Yes. Try `-e` if these other (GNU based) flags fail. – Steven Lu Jan 05 '17 at 17:04
Just for information, this also works with BusyBox on Android. – tomasz86 Apr 09 '22 at 10:23

score 3 · Answer 6 · edited Apr 09 '23 at 19:55

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For BSD systems including FreeBSD and macOS, it would be:

ls -la -D '%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S'

edited Apr 09 '23 at 19:55

miken32

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answered Oct 23 '15 at 10:23

AndiDog

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How to have Linux ls command show second in time stamp

6 Answers6