* characters against executable files

[Shivkumar]

Hi,

i noticed * character against some executable file names.
In hpux i didn't notice but on solaris i saw these * characters against the executable file names such as shell scripts etc.

Why solaris shows these but not hpux ? Is it due to bash shell or something else ??

Thanks,
Shiv

[Andrew Merritt_2 · Accepted solution]

It's the effect of the '-F' option to 'ls'. I suspect that on the system you see the asterisks that 'ls' is an alias or other way of invoking the base command with the '-F' option enabled.

Andrew

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi Shiv:

As Andrew notes, the '-F' option of 'ls' adds a "/" to the dend of directory names; a "*" to the end of executable files; a "|" to the end of files that are pipes; and a "@" to the end of file names that are symbolic links.

Some folks like to alias 'ls' in their profile to enable this by default.

# alias ls='ls -F'

You can easily see this by doing:

# alias

Regards!

...JRF...

[spex]

Shiv,

Also be aware that shorthand versions of the 'ls' command with various options specified exist. For instance, 'lsf' is shorthand for 'ls -F'. From ls(1):

ls is known by several shorthand-version names for the various
formats:

l is equivalent to ls -m
ll is equivalent to ls -l (ell)
lsf is equivalent to ls -F
lsr is equivalent to ls -R
lsx is equivalent to ls -x

The shorthand notations are implemented as links to ls. Option arguments to the shorthand versions behave exactly as if the long form above had been used with the additional arguments.

PCS

[Raj D.]

Shiv,

You can get somemore details with,

# man lsx
or
# man lsf


Cheers,
Raj.

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom,

This is an environment issue that I've successfully ignored for 10 years with no ill effects.

Its nothing to worry about. I've seen it on hpux as well.

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