Re: broken ls in coreutils 8.25

[Tomas Nordin]

Eric Blake writes:

> 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?

When I type `"` or `'` followed by some letter(s) and do tab completion,
I get the rest of the "real" filename and close quote for free. I am
more likely to do that.

>>> - 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.

-- 
Tomas Nordin (The computing freedom explorer)