In Windows it is possible to open explorer and add columns to view additional information about a file. For example in the image below, I added the columns for Company, Copyright and Description:
I need to know if there is a way to obtain this information via command line on a system running linux (Ubuntu 12.04 LTS). I can use strings and grep for the company name and see that, but, it assumes I already know the company name. I can't just grep for "Company" and have it return the company name on the same or next line.
61 Answer
You can't get all the information with ls.
You need several commands:
Name:
lsOwner:
ls -ld <filename> | cut -f3 -d' 'For example:
rootDate modified:
ls -ld <filename> | awk '{print $6" "$7}'For example:
2012-03-02 06:56(Use
stat <filename>for date accessed and changed.)Type:
file <filename>For example:
/lib/libiw.so.30: ELF 32-bit LSB shared object, Intel 80386 (...)Size:
ls -hld <filename> | cut -f5 -d' 'For example:
34KTags: N/A
Company:
apt-cache show $(dpkg -S <filename> | cut -f1 -d:) | grep OriginFor example:
Origin: Ubuntu(On .rpm-based systems this information can be found in
rpm -q -i -f <filename>)Copyright:
cat /usr/share/doc/$(dpkg -S <filename> | cut -f1 -d:)/copyright 2>/dev/null || echo 'No copyright information'For example:
(...) Copyright: Commercial (...)(On .rpm-based systems this information can be found in
rpm -q -i -f <filename>)Description:
apt-cache show $(dpkg -S <filename> | cut -f1 -d:) | fgrep 'Description' | fgrep -v Description-md5For example:
Description-en: Filesystem in Userspace (library)(On .rpm-based systems this information can be found in
rpm -q -i -f <filename>)Long description:
apt-cache show $(dpkg -S <filename> | cut -f1 -d:) | egrep -v '^[^ ]'For example:
GNU findutils provides utilities to find files meeting specified criteria and perform various actions on the files which are found. This package contains 'find' and 'xargs'; however, 'locate' has been split off into a separate package.(On .rpm-based systems this information can be found in
rpm -q -i -f <filename>)
This is a very quick and dirty shell function for Ubuntu that provides much of the information above:
function lsw { filename=$1; ( echo "XXNameXXOwnerXXDate ModifiedXXTypeXXSizeXXCompanyXXDescription"; ( echo XX$filename; echo -n XX; ls -dl $filename | cut -f3 -d' '; echo -n XX; ls -dl $filename | awk '{print $6" "$7}'; echo -n XX; file $filename | cut -f2 -d: | cut -f1 -d,; echo -n XX; ls -hld $filename| cut -f5 -d' '; echo -n XX; apt-cache show $(dpkg -S $filename 2>/dev/null| cut -f1 -d:) 2>/dev/null| egrep 'Origin:|Section:' | tail -n 1 | cut -f2 -d:; echo -n XX; apt-cache show $(dpkg -S $filename 2>/dev/null| cut -f1 -d:) 2>/dev/null| fgrep 'Description' | fgrep -v Description-md5 | cut -f2 -d:) | tr '\n' ' '; echo ) | column -t -s XX; }Some examples:
$ lsw /home/jaume
Name Owner Date Modified Type Size Company Description
/home/jaume jaume 2013-02-19 22:01 directory 4.0K
$ lsw /opt/ibm/notes/notes
Name Owner Date Modified Type Size Company Description
/opt/ibm/notes/notes root 2012-12-08 08:47 ELF 32-bit LSB executable 47K IBM IBM Notes
$ lsw /lib/libfuse.so.2
Name Owner Date Modified Type Size Company Description
/lib/libfuse.so.2 root 2012-03-02 16:33 symbolic link to `libfuse.so.2.8.6' 16 Ubuntu Filesystem in Userspace (library) 
