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From: jpdres10@usl-pc.UUCP (Green Eric Lee)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Large programs
Message-ID: <93@usl-pc.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 15-Oct-87 11:48:34 EDT
Article-I.D.: usl-pc.93
Posted: Thu Oct 15 11:48:34 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 17-Oct-87 23:38:20 EDT
References: <1046@ius1.cs.cmu.edu> <1130@gilsys.UUCP> <30035@sun.uucp> <6530@brl-smoke.ARPA>
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In message <6530@brl-smoke.ARPA>, gwyn@brl-smoke.ARPA (Doug Gwyn ) says:
>In article <30035@sun.uucp> guy%gorodish@Sun.COM (Guy Harris) writes:
>The issue of "ls" columnation is not whether it is useful to have such an
>option built into "ls"; given the special nature of multi-directory listing,
>it obviously is.  The real issue is whether "ls" should decide on its own
>whether or not to columnate, such as the Berkeley version does, or not do
>so unless directed by a specific option, such as the System V version does.

I use both BSD and Sys V. On both systems I have put this alias into my
.cshrc:

alias ls "ls -C"

so that columnization is always enabled. The problem I always have
with the columnization of "ls" is that sometimes BSD looks, sees it's
talking to a pipe, and says "gee, he must not want columns!". Very
irritating if I happen to be piping it to my favorite pager (e.g., for
a very long directory listing). 

Still, for NAIVE users, the usual default is probably the best. I have
not had any experiences where I got multi-column when I wanted
single-column, BSD seems pretty smart about figuring out the
difference between a terminal device and other devices, and since
those experiences are apparently rare, invoking "ls" with the "ls -1"
option when necessary seems to be more appropriate than requiring all
the users to always be typing "ls -C", which is a very commonly used
operation.

My "man 1 ls" produced (on BSD4.2):

     ls	[ -acdfgilqrstu1ACLFR ]	name ...

At first hand that looks a bit excessive, but the alternative, for
many of these options, would be a totally seperate command (couldn't
be done with pipes and filters, in other words). For example, the -F
option causes directories to be marked with a trailing "/" and
executables with a trailing "*", a feature so nice that I aliased it
into my "ls" alias on BSD4.2.

Considering that the binaries for /bin/ls are 20K on a Vax 780 under
BSD4.3, I don't see any point on unfairly picking on ls for being a
pig... there's lots of other pigs that are truly worth picking on. As
long as you don't point to GNU Emacs (with which I'm both reading
posting news nowadays :-).

--
Eric Green  elg@usl.CSNET       from BEYOND nowhere:
{ihnp4,cbosgd}!killer!elg,      P.O. Box 92191, Lafayette, LA 70509
{ut-sally,killer}!usl!elg     "there's someone in my head, but it's not me..."