The standard ls command in Linux/Unix systems shows only filenames by default. This behavior is by design for terminal space efficiency, but becomes problematic when:

• Debugging scripts that require absolute paths
• Documenting file locations in technical documentation
• Processing outputs in pipelines where context matters

While ls doesn't have a direct flag for full paths, these methods work:

# Method 1: Prefix with directory
ls -d "$PWD"/*

# Method 2: For specific files
ls -d "$PWD"/filename.ext

When you need more control:

# Recursive listing with full paths
find "$PWD" -type f -exec ls -l {} \;

# Formatted output with paths
ls | xargs -I{} echo "$PWD/{}"

Processing log files in a backup script:

#!/bin/bash
for logfile in $(ls -d /var/log/app/*.log); do
    gzip "$logfile"
    aws s3 cp "$logfile.gz" s3://backup-bucket/
done

When ls isn't enough:

• find . -printf '%p\n' - More flexible path formatting
• realpath *.txt - Resolves relative to absolute paths
• readlink -f filename - Canonical path resolution

---

The standard ls command in Linux/Unix systems displays only filenames by default. When you run:

ls /var/log

You'll see output like:

syslog  auth.log  kern.log

This is often sufficient for basic navigation, but sometimes you need the complete absolute path.

While not exactly using ls, this gives similar output with full paths:

find /var/log -maxdepth 1 -type f -printf '%p\n'

This outputs:

/var/log/syslog
/var/log/auth.log
/var/log/kern.log

For a specific file, you can use:

readlink -f filename

Or for multiple files with ls:

ls /var/log | xargs -I {} readlink -f /var/log/{}

For the current directory:

ls -d "$PWD"/*

For any directory:

ls -d /path/to/dir/*

Add this to your ~/.bashrc:

function lsf() {
    ls -1 "$@" | while read file; do
        echo "$(pwd)/$file"
    done
}

Then use:

lsf /var/log

If you have GNU coreutils version 8.25 or later:

ls --format=verbose /var/log

Combine with awk for path extraction:

ls --format=verbose /var/log | awk '{print $NF}'

For recursive directory listing with full paths:

find $(pwd) -type f

Or using ls with find:

find /path/to/dir -type f -exec ls -l {} \;