From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!utah-cs!utah-gr!thomas
Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards
Title: Re: wishlist to be conducted in this group
Article-I.D.: utah-gr.611
Posted: Tue Nov  2 11:50:29 1982
Received: Wed Nov  3 05:39:53 1982
References: populi.432

I'm not sure I understand your question, but ls behavior is well defined
in the cases you mention.  
	'ls directory' will always list the contents of the directory, unless
		the -d flag is specified (not -a, was this a typo?).
	'ls <list of files>' always sorts across, since "Files which are
		not the contents of a directory being interpreted are
		always listed across the page rather than down the
		page in columns.  This is because the individual file
		names may be arbitrarily long." (From the ls(1) manual
		page.)
=Spencer