Debian Bug report logs - #666244
ls: entangled directory display option

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Message #5 received at submit@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Joey Hess <joeyh@debian.org>

To: Debian Bug Tracking System <submit@bugs.debian.org>

Subject: ls: entangled directory display option

Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2012 18:27:59 -0400

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Package: coreutils
Version: 8.13-3.1
Severity: normal
Tags: patch

While in the source of ls, I noticed an easy way to get it to do something
I've always wanted; display the contents of multiple directories as if
they were all in a single directory. Since -u (for "union") is already
in use, I picked option -e for entangle.

For example:

joey@gnu:/tmp> ls foo bar -e
barfile  foofile

It also works with -l (and other output formats), although for -l,
I left it displaying the individual directory block sizes.
Summing them would be a nice improvement.

joey@gnu:/tmp> ls foo bar . -e -l
total 0
total 0
total 0
drwxr-xr-x 2 joey joey  60 Mar 29 18:18 bar
-rw-r--r-- 1 joey joey   0 Mar 29 18:18 barfile
drwxr-xr-x 2 joey joey  60 Mar 29 18:17 foo
-rw-r--r-- 1 joey joey   0 Mar 29 18:17 foofile
drwx------ 2 joey joey  60 Mar 29 11:07 gpg-AXD46h
drwx------ 2 joey joey  60 Mar 29 11:07 ssh-BDuydssP2259

-- System Information:
Debian Release: wheezy/sid
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable')
Architecture: i386 (i686)

Kernel: Linux 3.1.0-1-686-pae (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.utf8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.utf8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages coreutils depends on:
ii  dpkg          1.16.2
ii  install-info  4.13a.dfsg.1-8
ii  libacl1       2.2.51-5
ii  libattr1      1:2.4.46-5
ii  libc6         2.13-27
ii  libselinux1   2.1.9-2

coreutils recommends no packages.

coreutils suggests no packages.

-- no debconf information

-- 
see shy jo

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Message #10 received at 666244-done@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Joey Hess <joeyh@debian.org>

To: 666198-done@bugs.debian.org, 666244-done@bugs.debian.org, 666684-done@bugs.debian.org, 666688-done@bugs.debian.org

Cc: Bob Proulx <bob@proulx.com>

Subject: Re: Bug#666198: ls: add -y option

Date: Mon, 2 Apr 2012 14:32:20 -0400

Bob Proulx wrote:
> Joey Hess wrote:
> > This is needed for compatability with an early form of shar archive
> > posted to Usenet in the early 80's. There is valuable historical data
> > to be extracted from these, but they often seem to use this -y option
> > to ls that is not present in modern versions.
> 
> This is an interesting compatibility feature.  As such I agree it has
> some merit although how much I don't know.  Put me down as officially
> abstaining from that point.  However:

This was a set up for
http://kitenet.net/~joey/blog/entry/ls:_the_missing_options/

This article http://article.olduse.net/286@Apur-ee.UUCP about COBOL
was edited to create a fairly convincing historical proof of a ls -y.
I think only fairly convincing because it's unclear why a shar would
ever need to ls files, even back in the 80's!

As to the other options, multiple people agree that -e is nearly almost
useful, although none of us can quite find a reason to use it. My bug
report neglected to mention that ls -eR is very buggy. -j is clearly a joke.

-- 
see shy jo

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