ls version number sorting Mac OS X

Question

Is there an equivalent to ls -v in Mac OS X that will do version number sorting?

In Mac OS X, ls -v does NOT do version number sorting, but the Finder seems to.

Answer 1

The default ls in OS X does not have version sort capabilities. This is a feature of GNU ls, which comes with most Linuxes, but does not ship with OS X. You can install GNU ls through the GNU coreutils package.

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The easiest way of getting it on a Mac is to install a package manager like Homebrew or MacPorts and install coreutils through it.

So, for example, install Homebrew:

/usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.github.com/gist/323731)"

Wait a bit, read the installation instructions. Then, install coreutils:

brew install coreutils

This will add all the GNU coreutils with the g prefix, so for example, you will be able to use gls instead of ls, which now offers version sort.

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To override the default ls behavior (and those of other builtins), you can add this line to your ~/.bash_profile:

source /usr/local/Cellar/coreutils/8.12/aliases

Note that this might affect other programs that rely upon the BSD version. If you just want to alias ls, use the following instead:

alias ls="$brew_prefix/bin/gls"