Can I truncate long file names in ls listing

Question

I have a number of files with very long names. Please, is there a way to use ls -C and truncate the file names to get more columns for an overall view?

Or is there a better way to get a compact listing?

Answer 1

You could do something like:

ls | cut -c1-20 | columns -W "${COLUMNS:-80}"

(that's columns with an s from GNU autogen). Or:

ls | cut -c1-20 | column -c"${COLUMNS:-80}"

Using column as found on BSDs or in bsdmainutils on Debian or its derivatives.

zsh also has support to print things in columns, so you could define a function like:

setopt extendedglob
c() print -rC$[COLUMNS/(($1)+2)] -- "${(M)@[2,-1]##?(#c0,$[$1])}"

And use it as:

c 20 *.txt

To print the list txt files in columns, truncated to 20 characters.

And to make it a bit crazier, you could add:

command_not_found_handler() {(($1)) && c "$@"}

That way, you can also do:

20 *

Or even:

8+8 *

Answer 2

Assuming an 80 column screen, I like to use

ls -F | perl -lne 's/(.{34}).*/$1... /s ; print' | column -x | more

use ls -FC instead to sort by recency

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(Sidenote: my ls already scrolls because it's aliased to ls -CF --color | more -r. Not sure that's best practice...)