What happens when you enter “ls -l” in a linux shell?

LS is an extremely useful basic builtin within a linux shell. It takes all of the files within the current working directory and prints them to the terminal. It will ignore any hidden files which begin with “.”. For example a .git will not be displayed on a basic “ls”.

The “-l” flag instructs the program to display the files in the long list format. This will list all the files in alphabetical order, show their permissions, author, group owner and creation date. It also shows the files in an easier to read format.