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How can ls be flagged to sort .-prefixed hidden directories and files in groups so that its output is sorted as visible directories, hidden directories, visible files, then hidden files?

I currently have ls aliased to ls -lG --color --group-directories-first which groups directories first, but visible and hidden directories are mixed together.

Instead, the output of ls should be:

visibleDirectoryA
visibleDirectoryB
.hiddenDirectoryA
.hiddenDirectoryB
visibleFileA
visibleFileB
.hiddenFileA
.hiddenFileB
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  • i can reproduce, with locale en_AU.UTF8. BTW, LANG=C ls .... fails to reproduce (and, in fact, will even sort a directory name like !foo before any of the .hidden directories - strict ascii value sort rather than a natural sort). Commented Jan 13, 2018 at 6:19
  • My locale output is LANG=en_US.UTF-8 LANGUAGE= LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 LC_NUMERIC="en_US.UTF-8" LC_TIME="en_US.UTF-8" LC_COLLATE="en_US.UTF-8" LC_MONETARY="en_US.UTF-8" LC_MESSAGES="en_US.UTF-8" LC_PAPER="en_US.UTF-8" LC_NAME="en_US.UTF-8" LC_ADDRESS="en_US.UTF-8" LC_TELEPHONE="en_US.UTF-8" LC_MEASUREMENT="en_US.UTF-8" LC_IDENTIFICATION="en_US.UTF-8" LC_ALL= Commented Jan 13, 2018 at 6:56

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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Use -v for natural sort. e.g.

ls -lG --color --group-directories-first -A -v

Note while they are sorted into their own "group", the .hidden directories will appear before the visible directories, not after them, because a . sorts lower than most other characters.

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