ls -a, ls -l

-a

If we add the flag -a to the command, we can see hidden files.

Hidden files start with a . before their name.

$ ls -a

You can see in my example, there is a hidden file called .CFUserTextEncoding. Most hidden files are added by the system. If you don't know what its for leave it alone.

-l

If we add the flag -l to the command, we can see a list view of the files, with lots of extra data.

$ ls -l

The file and folder names are now in the last column. The columns before it have a date string of when it was last modified, its size in bytes, and information about ownership and permissions.

-la, -al

We can also combine the flags into one, like -al or -la. The order doesn't matter, as the result will be the same. We will see a long list of our files, including any hidden files.

$ ls -la