Re: [PATCH] ls: add --sort=width (-W) option to sort by filename width

[Carl Edquist]

Hi Kaz,

On Fri, 16 Apr 2021, Kaz Kylheku (Coreutils) wrote:

> The multi column output can be done by ...

I don't know if you read the original post in this thread, but it contains 
a brief (but complete) example for doing all this in the shell, and 
handles arbitrary characters in filenames.

But one problem mentioned with measuring the "length" of filenames (number 
of characters), say in (g)awk, is that it does not consider the printed 
widths (in terminal columns) of unicode characters (sometimes multiple 
columns wide), which ls obtains via wcwidth(3).

Carl