# Displaying file sizes with thousands separators



## MMacD (Feb 2, 2020)

I find it hard to parse large numbers unless they have thousands-separators.  It turns out that it's much easier to add separators than the docs make it appear:  one environment var in your console's config file, and an option to the long-form list command (which is the only version of the list command with which it works).

[I use tcsh as my console, so if you don't, you'll need to make appropriate changes.]

# This environment var is all that's needed to identify the separator.
# The language and charset should reflect your location and preference, of course
`setenv LC_NUMERIC "en_US.UTF-8"` 

# I aliased in more options, but the comma option is what triggers the separator's display
# regardless of what the conventional separator char is for your locale
`alias ls 'ls -, -FAl'`


----------

