Re: Octal file permissions in ls

[Sakse Dalum]

On Mon, Mar 18, 2013 at 01:08:14PM -0600, Eric Blake wrote:
> >> Thanks for the attempt.  We prefer patches against libvirt.git; for more
> >> information, read the HACKING file in the sources that you downloaded.
> > 
> > Here is the current HACKING file.
> > 
> >   
> > http://git.savannah.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=coreutils.git;a=blob;f=HACKING;hb=HEAD
> 

Interesting, the sources in the repository from which I downloaded didn't
include a HACKING (or README-hacking) file. I see my patch pretty much fails to
adhere to the standard specified there.

Also, I wasn't aware of the fact that it had previously been discussed, and
although I know there are other standard means of getting this information
(using stat, etc.), they are a bit too cumbersome for my preferences and I'd
personally like to see it as a switch for ls instead. I've spoken to other
people who would also welcome this as a nice new feature.

I see the issue with regards to the short name switch, but to me it seems
strange that this feature has not been an integral part of ls from the very
start, so at least the long name should be available.

Post-processing the output (using sed, awk, etc.) works, but such an approach
feels (at least to me) too much on the hack-side of a solution, since ls starts
with the permissions in octal format and then converts them to rwx-format ---
converting them back again using pattern matching is a strange (albeit
minuscule) maluse of ressources.

Lastly, all the stat, find, and post-processing solutions effectively require an
alias to be memorisable and are thus not immediately portable to other machines,
which is my main concern as I need this feature chiefly on machines I SSH into.

Perhaps it's worth reconsidering the decision not to include this feature?

If so, I would be happy to make the necessary testsuites and documentation,
etc. and have no legal quarrels as to assigning copyright to the FSF.

- Sakse Dalum