ls-imitation

C project that reimplements the functionality of the Unix ls -l command. The program parses command-line arguments, retrieves file information, and formats the output similar to GNU ls.

Features

• Implements ls -l style output:
  • File type and permissions
  • Number of links
  • Owner and group
  • File size
  • Modification time
  • Filename
• Handles both files and directories from command-line arguments
• Prints directory headers and separators when multiple directories are listed
• Detects whether output is a terminal (isatty) and adjusts formatting
• Maintains a linked-list of file entries with conversion to arrays
• Supports sorting file entries by filename
• Column alignment for neat tabular output
• Edge cases handled (empty input, single file, multiple directories, etc.)
• Simple build system via Makefile

Building

On Linux

git clone https://git.scratko.xyz/ls-imitation
cd ls-imitation
make
./ls-imitation

Usage

The program mimics the behavior of ls -l. Instead of calling ls -l, run:

./ls-imitation <files or directories>

Examples

./ls-imitation
./ls-imitation file.txt
./ls-imitation dir1 dir2
./ls-imitation file1.txt dir/