Show Hidden Files

By default linux ls or ls -l do not show Hidden files.

Hidden files are files that start with dot in file name. Some example hidden files are ".htaccess", ".history", etc...

Any Files start with . are hidden files in Linux

To see hidden files, you have to use "ls -la"

In Following example, ls shows only one files, others are hidden.

# ls -l
total 16
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 15864 2006-07-10 14:26 index.html
#

"ls -a" shows all files in the folder

# ls -la
total 68
drwxr-xr-x  3 root root  4096 2006-07-20 04:55 .
drwxr-xr-x 21 root root  4096 2006-07-18 12:50 ..
drwx------  2 root root  4096 2006-07-10 07:16 .aptitude
-rw-------  1 root root    33 2006-07-19 14:24 .bash_history
-rw-r--r--  1 root root  2227 2005-10-13 04:04 .bashrc
-rw-r--r--  1 root root 15864 2006-07-10 14:26 index.html
-rw-------  1 root root    35 2006-07-16 07:13 .lesshst
-rw-r--r--  1 root root    90 2006-07-15 15:41 .mailcap
-rw-r--r--  1 root root   230 2006-07-15 15:41 .mime.types
-rw-------  1 root root   261 2006-07-19 13:52 .mysql_history
-rw-r--r--  1 root root   141 2005-10-13 04:04 .profile
-rw-------  1 root root  1024 2006-07-10 14:39 .rnd
-rw-------  1 root root  6794 2006-07-20 04:55 .viminfo
#

FreeBSD and UNIX servers always show hidden files. You can set Linux always show hidden files. To do this add "alias ls='ls -la'" to /root/.bashrc

# cd /root
# vi .bashrc

Add line

alias ls='ls -la'

Now log off and relogin, ls and ls -l will now considered as "ls -la"