Re: dired-move-to-filename-regexp

[Richard Stallman]

    > I think a better solution is if we can turn off the new "feature"
    > of adapting the column widths to the data.

    One way would be to extend --format to allow fairly arbitrary formats
    that can specify column widths.  For example, Emacs could do this:

      ls --format='%11m %2l %8o %8g %7s %12d %f'

Sure, this would do the job, but I think it would be extra work and
add no real benefit.  However, if Meyering wants to do it, I won't
object to it.

    Another possibility is to have a new option to disable the new
    feature, e.g. "ls --traditional-column-widths".  This would be a bit
    easier to implement, but would be less general

We don't need extra generality just for generality's sake.

                                                   and might have problems
    of its own (e.g., users and implementations don't agree on what the
    traditional widths are).

This problem is not real.  For Dired to work right when GNU ls is
installed, we need only that GNU ls be consistent with itself when
--traditional-column-widths is used.

    I understand that some non-GNU ls implementations also adapt column
    widths to data, so the Emacs problem would remain with these
    implementations, regardless of how we change GNU ls.

We can suggest installing GNU ls.