Re: broken ls in coreutils 8.25

[Eric Blake]

On 02/01/2016 11:17 PM, Harald Dunkel wrote:
> Hi Pádraig,
> 
> On 02/01/16 17:07, Pádraig Brady wrote:
>> On 31/01/16 06:48, Harald Dunkel wrote:
> 
>> The reasons we changed the default was:
> 
>> - It only happens when outputting to terminals
> 
> This means if you use "ls -1 | somescript" the script will
> not see the quoting style. Don't you think that this is
> inconsistent, not to mention that a script would benefit
> much more from this quoting style than a human?

No. ls _already_ behaves differently when not outputting to a terminal
(that is, 'ls | somescript' and 'ls -1 | somescript' behave the same,
because a non-terminal implies -1).

> 
>> - It disambiguates the output for users
> 
> This means that the user has to count '\' and "'" in the output
> of ls to get the "real" filename.

Yeah, but which are you more likely to do, retype the "real" filename
manually (and insert your own shell quoting as appropriate), or
copy-and-paste the existing output with a mouse click or two?

> 
>> - Output can be pasted back in the shell for further processing
> 
> This means that it useful only on a graphic terminal, for people
> using a mouse, but it affects all users using "ls"

These days, how many users are NOT using a graphical terminal?  Again,
it only affects output to a terminal, and it is very easy to adjust your
login setups to change the defaults to something you like, so that
_your_ terminal behaves the way you want.

-- 
Eric Blake   eblake redhat com    +1-919-301-3266
Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org

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