I am trying to see some of the files in a directory but even when I do ls | tail -10, the command is slow (probably because of the large number of files) that nothing happens and I can not see any files. Any ideas?

You've got a large number of files. I've seen this happen lots, when a directory gets very, VERY full. You'll either get "argument list too long" or some other sort of error, if you've got tons of files.

I'd clean the directory up. A quick-and-dirty way would be to create a sub-directory, and do a "mv * ./<sub directory you just created name>", let it run a few seconds, and CTRL-C. There's a flag for MV that'll just move files, but I don't know what it is off the top of my head, check out the man page for mv.

Repeat those steps...soon you'll have all your files into separate sub-directories, of more manageable size. If the MV blows off due to too many files, you'll have to give it a finer filter, like "mv 1*.ext". I feel your pain...

Sadly or maybe happily it is not my directory but I will try using cp.

I do need to use these files so I am not too happy with this set up.

I would try to list them alphabetically and see if that works:

Unless everything starts with the same letter.