bug#25078: ls 8.26: discrepancy between `ls' and `ls -1' in the alignment of quoted and nonquoted items

[Paul Vint]

The alignment change is helpful, but I do have an argument against doing
the same in the -1 case:
It breaks something many of us have done in scripts.

Of course we *know* that ls -1 isn't the best way to go, but for quickie
scripts it has been the standby for many. Also, I cannot come up with a
good reason why someone would use ls -1 unless they were scripting it. (add
to that, if anyone using the -1 argument that seems to imply that they know
what they are doing). Having said that, I am thinking about it now an know
that I have used ls-1 before just to see the output, and I used it to see
the honest output without any "noise" - no dates and times, no formatting,
no anything, just plain filenames. I think the "list one file per line." in
the man page says it right; just list it.

I understand when you say "The arguments aren't very strong for not
aligning `ls -1` by default,", however I have given you one (albeit weak)
argument, and for me, I cannot see a strong argument for making ls -1 align
like that. As eluded to above, I cannot think of a scenario where someone
would use ls -1 and want it indented for them.

Cheers,
Paul

On Wed, Nov 30, 2016 at 4:35 PM, Pádraig Brady <address@hidden> wrote:

> On 30/11/16 20:19, Zhiming Wang wrote:
> > coreutils 8.26 includes the following improvement:
> >
> >> ls now aligns quoted items with non quoted items, which is easier to
> read,
> >> and also better indicates that the quote is not part of the actual name.
> >
> > which I find to be a welcome addition to the quoting behavior introduced
> in
> > 8.25.
>
> Cool, thanks.
>
> > However, this improvement does not apply to the -1 option, which is
> > puzzling to me. Compare the following (coreutils 8.26 on macOS 10.12.1,
> > 80-column terminal, bash or zsh):
> >
> >     $ ls
> >     '['
> >     'a very very very very very very very very very very very very long
> filename'
> >      b2sum
> >      base32
> >      base64
> >      basename
> >
> >     $ ls -1
> >     '['
> >     'a very very very very very very very very very very very very long
> filename'
> >     b2sum
> >     base32
> >     base64
> >     basename
> >
> > The second invocation with the -1 option leaves much to be desired in
> > comparison to the first invocation.
> >
> > -1 should probably receive the same alignment treatment?
>
> I originally had that but thought it might be more problematic than useful.
>
> When `ls -1` is used interactively it can be handy to triple click to
> select the whole line, in which case selecting just the file name without
> leading space would be preferred.
>
> Also one can use `ls -1 | less` etc. in "interactive" mode, in which case
> ls couldn't use alignment or it would break lots of scripts, but then
> the output would be inconsistent if alignment was used without the pipe.
>
> Also one can achieve the desired output with `ls -w1` or `ls -x -w1 |
> less`.
>
> The arguments aren't very strong for not aligning `ls -1` by default,
> so we may change this.
>
> thanks,
> Pádraig
>
>
>
>
>