Re: ls -la behavior change. Feature or Bug?

[Matt Schalit]

Thomas Linden wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I realized a change of the behavior of "ls -la" in the latest
> version. It does no more list dotfiles at the beginning of
> the listing, instead it ignores the dots and sorts the files
> based on the 2nd character.
>
> While this "feature" might be funny for some people, I find
> it annoying. ls is a standard unix utility and as such it
> should not change it's well known behavior. Especially not
> in such a way. Beside I didn't find this change mentioned in
> the changelog.
>
> So, what I am asking for is: As a user of ls I don't want this.
> Is it possible to turn it off and if yes - how? 

Yes.  It's covered in the FAQ.  ls behaves posixly as it should.
Your LC_COLLATE setting causes the sort order you see.


> Will this feature stay forever in ls? 

I hope so.  Standards are good.  OS vendors behave oddly
and don't get enough sleep.


> What ls should I use if this bug (what it IMHO is) will be there forever? 

Not a bug.  The user hasn't searched this list or read the
fileutils faq (wherever it lives).


> Would you agree to provide a second version of ls to the 
> source tree, say "good-old-ls", which people can use if
> they don't like that the behavior of ls changes, like me?

Not needed if users understand LC*.


> regards, Tom


Hope I wasn't too mean :)
Matt