Created 14 May 2002, last updated 24 November 2002

This is a replacement for ‘dir’. I wrote it for one reason: I didn’t see the point of using one command (dir) to see the names, sizes, and modification dates of files, and another command (attrib) to see the readonly (and other) attributes. So I wrote showfiles.py to do basic ‘dir’-like things, but with the attribute bits displayed as well.

The output looks pretty much like dir, but I’ve removed all of the excess noise (why on earth is the volume identification shown to me every time?), and made the output a little cleaner (“<DIR>”?). I’ve also sacrificed century for seconds (we live in a fast-paced world!), and added the attributes while making the output narrower:

$ dir
 Volume in drive C is Local Disk
 Volume Serial Number is 20AC-2FF4

 Directory of C:\

04/20/2002  01:53p      <DIR>          _gimp1.2
02/11/2002  09:28a      <DIR>          doc
01/04/2002  02:27p      <DIR>          Documents and Settings
04/12/2002  08:27p      <DIR>          Program Files
04/10/2002  10:39a      <DIR>          temp
05/03/2002  06:09p      <DIR>          WINNT
04/07/2002  07:51p          13,061,000 all.txt
04/09/2002  08:47a                  96 aplist.txt
05/02/2002  07:14p               3,826 greedypig.jpg
               8 File(s)     17,583,051 bytes
              19 Dir(s)   4,030,781,952 bytes free

$ showfiles
04/20/02 01:53:20p               / _gimp1.2
02/11/02 09:28:50a               / doc
01/04/02 02:27:20p               / Documents and Settings
04/12/02 08:27:21p               / Program Files
09/27/01 01:48:24p  hs           / RECYCLED
10/02/01 03:13:36p  hs           / RECYCLER
12/20/01 03:31:20p  hs           / System Volume Information
04/10/02 10:39:34a               / temp
05/03/02 06:09:36p               / WINNT
04/07/02 07:51:04p      13,061,000 all.txt
04/09/02 08:47:35a              96 aplist.txt
10/02/01 12:17:40p  hs         194 BOOT.INI
10/02/01 12:14:42p  hs           0 BOOTLOG.TXT
09/27/01 01:49:06p  hs         512 BOOTSECT.DOS
09/27/01 01:55:56p rh        3,027 DELL.SDR
05/02/02 07:14:22p           3,826 greedypig.jpg
10/02/01 02:31:06p rhs           0 IO.SYS
09/27/01 02:27:48p  h          125 IPH.PH
10/02/01 02:31:06p rhs           0 MSDOS.SYS
05/28/01 09:24:16p rhs      34,756 NTDETECT.COM
10/02/01 03:26:46p rhs     214,432 NTLDR
04/30/02 11:26:43a rhs 805,306,368 pagefile.sys
= 823,142,465 bytes, 41 files

(For the detail-oriented: I’ve edited down the directory listings above, so the totals are wrong.)

There are only a few options to showfiles: -d (or -od) sorts by date, and -s (or -os) sorts by size. The default is to sort by name. As you can see from the listings, it always shows all files, even those with the hidden or system attribute set. With no arguments, showfiles lists the files in the current directory. Arguments can either be files, directories, or standard wildcards. You can name as many of these in a single go as you want, all the results get shuffled together in the sort.

The -r option makes showfiles work recursively on subdirectories. The sorting options are applied to the entire list of files, regardless of where in the tree they were found, and the path name (rather than just the file name) is shown. This recursive mode is implemented in a stupid inefficient way. I apologize.

I don’t actually type ‘showfiles’ at the command line. I use a doskey macro instead:

doskey l=showfiles $*

so I can just type ‘l’ (I like commonly-used commands to have short names).

The main reason I still use “dir” occasionally is to list all files in a tree, but I’m planning to add that to showfiles as well. The last reason I still use “dir” (ironically) is for the extra bit of noise it always throws in: the space free on the disk.

Download: showfiles.py