Re: Possible ls bug?

[Erik Auerswald]

Hello Paul,

On Thu, Mar 21, 2019 at 03:46:28PM +0000, Bartells, Paul  wrote:
> Thanks for responding, Kaz. What you observed is true. There is a disconnect 
> between the command line and the listing I provided. Apparently I picked up 
> the wrong listing. There was an extra "/*" in the command line I showed. It 
> should have been ls -alR /kyc_mis/dev/*/paul/*. Please accept my apologies.
> 
> Here is a more accurate listing example:
> The first format is exactly what I have been trying to find with no success 
> up to this point. My issue is that all the subsequent directory listings do 
> not continue that format.
> 
> ls -alR /kyc_mis/dev/*/paul/* > coreutils_example.txt
> <<< partial listing of coreutils_example.txt >>>
> -rwxrwx--- 1 pb82477 kycmis      28744 Dec 12 13:54 
> /kyc_mis/dev/code/paul/alternate
> -rwxrwx--- 1 pb82477 kycmis       1467 Dec 19 15:21 
> /kyc_mis/dev/code/paul/code-file_attribs.sas
> -rwxrwx--- 1 pb82477 kycmis     393216 Jan  7 13:30 
> /kyc_mis/dev/code/paul/dqip_dev_exc_list.sas7bdat
> -rwxrwx--- 1 pb82477 kycmis        214 Nov 14 14:54 
> /kyc_mis/dev/code/paul/dup_kycid_work_items.sas
> -rwxrwx--- 1 pb82477 kycmis     524288 Jan  7 12:23 
> /kyc_mis/dev/code/paul/emp_dob.sas7bdat
> ...

The first listing shows files that match the glob pattern.

> /kyc_mis/dev/code/paul/cmr:
> total 17125
> drwxrwx---  6 pb82477 kycmis   2631 Dec  7 13:57 .
> drwxrwx--- 16 kycmis  kycmis   1417 Feb 11 11:47 ..
> -rw-rw----  1 pb82477 kycmis  59013 Nov  5 13:28 cmr_error_reject_reports.log
> -rwxrwx---  1 pb82477 kycmis  12445 Nov  5 13:46 cmr_error_reject_reports.sas
> -rwxrwx---  1 pb82477 kycmis   2477 Oct 17 14:49 
> cmr_excep_info_rejects_fieldlengths.sas
> -rwxrwx---  1 pb82477 kycmis   1658 Oct 22 14:32 cmr_excep_info_rejects.sas

The second listing shows the contents of a directory that matches
the glob pattern. Directories inside those directories will be shown
in the same format, because you used the '-R' option of ls.

> However, even though the original listing wasn't the right one, it still 
> illustrates the problem. With the command "ls -alR", only the first directory 
> listed in the output shows the full path and filename on the right side. 
> Perhaps there is a better way to produce such a list, but this was the best 
> I've been able to come up with. I don't understand why the listing format 
> would change when going from a parent folder to its children.
> 
> Whether or not this is a bug, though, my objective is to produce a recursive, 
> long line, all files listing of a given tree, ultimately written to a file. 
> Perhaps that question could be answered? The behavior I noticed with ls still 
> doesn't make sense to me, but I can live with that. All I really need is some 
> way to accomplish my objective of producing that listing to be used in some 
> analytic research.
> 
> Any thoughts about this would be appreciated. I am open to suggestions. 
> Thanks.

You could consider using 'find' instead of 'ls':

    find /kyc_mis/dev/*/paul/ -ls

Thanks,
Erik
-- 
Always use the right tool for the job.
                        -- Rob Pike