ls command works but not with options?

Question

In my terminal app when I type ls /? it gives me ls /d. Where can I find the other options? For example I want to list the file attributes and file length. I have tried also busybox to no avail.

Answer 1

It sounds like you want the extremely common

ls -l

For reference, the complete busybox help for ls:

BusyBox v1.21.0-Stericson (2013-01-28 21:49:55 GMT) multi-call binary.

Usage: ls [-1AaCxdLHRFplinsehrSXvctu] [-w WIDTH] [FILE]...

List directory contents

        -1      One column output
        -a      Include entries which start with .
        -A      Like -a, but exclude . and ..
        -C      List by columns
        -x      List by lines
        -d      List directory entries instead of contents
        -L      Follow symlinks
        -H      Follow symlinks on command line
        -R      Recurse
        -p      Append / to dir entries
        -F      Append indicator (one of */=@|) to entries
        -l      Long listing format
        -i      List inode numbers
        -n      List numeric UIDs and GIDs instead of names
        -s      List allocated blocks
        -e      List full date and time
        -h      List sizes in human readable format (1K 243M 2G)
        -r      Sort in reverse order
        -S      Sort by size
        -X      Sort by extension
        -v      Sort by version
        -c      With -l: sort by ctime
        -t      With -l: sort by mtime
        -u      With -l: sort by atime
        -w N    Assume the terminal is N columns wide
        --color[={always,never,auto}]   Control coloring

Answer 2

I would generally not expect /? to provide meaningful output, because it's really a DOS/Windows thing. Linux/Unix command option are typically passed with hyphens, either a single one for short flags (for example, ls -l) or two hyphens for verbose ones (e.g. --help). Two possibilities that you can try:

1. If you're using a version provided by busybox, you can use busybox ls --help. Doing this without the call to busybox at the front of the command may not yield any results (e.g. CyanogenMod just responds with unknown option '--' if I try ls --help).
2. The Linux man page for ls is readily available online. The options there are probably not all implemented in the Android binary, but it will give you a bit of an overview. You can also check the man page for busybox, which has all of the commands it implements as well as the options they support. I am not sure if the Android version implements all the same commands/options, but it very well may.