Re: enhancement request: ls option to output column headings

[Pádraig Brady]

On 22/03/2023 12:39, Bob Power via GNU coreutils General Discussion wrote:
> Hi,
> Lots of questions online asking what the various columns output by ls are and 
> ultimately it seems ls...
>
> does not print headingsdoes not offer an option to print headingsdoes not doc 
> what the columns areand
> what is output and in what order varies with the software version, options 
> used, and possibly distribution.
>
> I've resorted to comparing the output with output from the stat command to 
> figure it out.I've even considered replacing it with a bash script along the 
> lines of  \ls -1 | xargs -n1 stat --printf='%B*%b %n\n' etc so I can determine 
> and output the headings.
>
> It'd be nice if ls had a command line option to output column headings (leave 
> the default as is so as not to break existing scripts)
> Looks like it hasn't changed in 10 yrs or so. With linux maturing/becoming more 
> attractive the way it is and alternatives getting uglier maybe an update is in 
> order.
> Cheers,
> Bob.

Yes this has some merit,
especially since it's awkward to achieve with `column` due to whitespace in 
names, dates etc.

cheers,
Pádraig