During my infant years working on UNIX systems, I regularly required a column  listing output of files and directories.
I have always been a ‘lazy typist’, so instead of attempting to remember various arguments for the ‘ls’ command I found it easier to create a command called ‘lf’ (list files)
Typing ‘ls -CF’ produces a list of files by column and a appended indicator (one of */=>@|) to the entry.

As root create the file ‘lf’ in /usr/bin and then add the required command.

Tones: # vi /usr/bin/lf
ls -CF $1

and write the file away with ‘shift zz’
Now, change the file permissions to make the file executable and change the ownership if incorrect.

Tones: # chmod 755 /usr/bin/lf
Tones: # chown root:root /usr/bin/lf

At the prompt just type:

Tones: # lf /usr/downloads
bootstrap.wbt.gz  fkn-webmintheme.0.6.0.wbt.gz  ipset-country*  ipv6-all-zones.tar.gz  nomachine_6.4.6_1_x86_64.rpm  unzip/  webmin-1.900-1.noarch.rpm

Directories are appended with a ‘/’
Executable files are appended with a ‘*’

Cheers
Tone of Tonesworld