Why is the "dir" command not showing me certain folders?

Question

I used the dir command in the Windows command prompt to display the list of files/folders in a directory. I noticed that it did not display a folder named tmp. However, I tried running dir in Powershell, and it did display the tmp folder in the output. Why did the Windows command prompt hide this folder from me?

Solution

You need to add the "show hidden" option to dir:

dir /a

this should do the trick.

source

Comments

[stonk-overflow]

But why is the "tmp" folder hidden? It's just a normal folder in a rails project that happens to have the name "tmp." Does Windows treat folders with this name differently?

[Caffeinated]

@blahshaw - I'm guessing thats the windows default or something. seeing that in dev environ's a tmp folder is usually not anything we need

[stonk-overflow]

"dir /a" displayed the "tmp" folder, so Windows must treat it as a hidden folder. A bit surprising since it isn't prefixed with a dot.

[Matt]

@blahshaw @coffee It's worth mentioning that dir in Powershell is an alias for Get-ChildItem. By default it does not display hidden folders. Get-ChildItem -Force would do that.

[phuclv]

the OP is asking how to show hidden files, not how to change their attributes

[Phil Gilmore]

This answer does exactly that. It will show all the files and folders but will also indicate whether they are marked as hidden. As shown, it does NOT change the attributes.