How to change time style used by ls

The date and time displayed by ls -l can be changed to any format you want.

The default is:

$ ls -l
total 88
-rw-rw-r-- 1 joe joe     6 Jan 27 12:23 a.txt
-rw-rw-r-- 1 joe joe   522 Jan 27 12:22 haha.txt
-rw-rw-r-- 1 joe joe 80360 Jan 27 12:23 jump.pdf

To change the format of the date and time use the --time-style option. Values that can be passed to it are long-iso, full-iso and iso. You can also specify your own custom format as a string.

Here is how the different time styles look:

$ ls -l --time-style=long-iso
total 88
-rw-rw-r-- 1 joe joe     6 2015-01-27 12:23 a.txt
-rw-rw-r-- 1 joe joe   522 2015-01-27 12:22 haha.txt
-rw-rw-r-- 1 joe joe 80360 2015-01-27 12:23 jump.pdf

$ ls -l --time-style=full-iso
total 88
-rw-rw-r-- 1 joe joe     6 2015-01-27 12:23:08.309375574 +0800 a.txt
-rw-rw-r-- 1 joe joe   522 2015-01-27 12:22:59.773375414 +0800 haha.txt
-rw-rw-r-- 1 joe joe 80360 2015-01-27 12:23:32.693376032 +0800 jump.pdf

$ ls -l --time-style=iso
total 88
-rw-rw-r-- 1 joe joe     6 01-27 12:23 a.txt
-rw-rw-r-- 1 joe joe   522 01-27 12:22 haha.txt
-rw-rw-r-- 1 joe joe 80360 01-27 12:23 jump.pdf

Tried with: Ubuntu 14.04