attempt to alias ls -a causes wierd symbols and lines to appear

[Eric Bakken]

recently i wanted to alias ls -a and i dont remember what i did but the results were that when i enter an ls command, it lists the files but at the bottom of the list, lines and symbols appear and i have to open a new console for the letters to show up normal again...

[Mel Burslan · Accepted solution]

more than likely, wherever you run the ls command, you had some filenames starting with . (dot) character, which were not listed with plain ls command but became visble thanks to -a switch and one or more of these files had some ANSI control characters in it telling the terminal to change its behavior.

It is nothing new, but I usually end up where you are when I accidentally cat a binary file assuming it is text. Terminal emulators usually come with something called "reset terminal" which effectively restarts the code without hampering your connection but with the default settings, i.e., no goobledy-gook characters.

I have gotten myself into situations, where even the reset terminal did not help. I had to abort the session with a kill signal from another session. It happens every once in a while.

[Steven E. Protter]

ls -1 > file

edit the file with vi

while read -r filename
do
rm $filename
done < file

This will delete the crazy files you don't want.

SEP

[Eric Bakken]

I tried going and removing the alias but it still does that with any ls command....

and i'm not exactly sure on what you want me to do Steven, I would be content with just getting my regular ls back

[Kofi ARTHIABAH]

Hi Eric:

Try
unalias ls
which ls
whereis ls

then try:

/usr/bin/ls

if this works for you then you might want to alias your ls to /usr/bin/ls.

Good luck.
Kofi