Anyway, after some time if you find yourself wanting to use the feature a
lot but being bored to type --sort=width each time, maybe that will
provide more inclination to add a short option...
("Yes," you might say, "but that's what shell aliases are for."
But...don't you like munging short options? :)
"Search your feelings, Luke."
...
Lastly, in the help / manpage output, "width" will looks a bit lonely
among the sort options, as the only one without an accompanying short
option:
--sort=WORD sort by WORD instead of name: none (-U), size (-S),
time (-t), version (-v), extension (-X), width
And, it might be worth noting that in the help / manpage output, the
_only_ documentation (although pithy) for what the different sort types
actually do is in the description for their corresponding short options.
So, you lose the chance to document it in the --help output if you omit
the short opiton.
...
What do you think? :)