Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcvax!hp4nl!philmds!leo
From: leo@philmds.UUCP (Leo de Wit)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: lc
Message-ID: <968@philmds.UUCP>
Date: 28 Feb 89 12:32:13 GMT
References: <2107@water.waterloo.edu> <300@laas.laas.fr> <679@mks.UUCP>
Reply-To: leo@philmds.UUCP (Leo de Wit)
Organization: Philips I&E DTS Eindhoven
Lines: 31

In article <679@mks.UUCP> egisin@mks.UUCP (Eric Gisin) writes:
    []
|The One True "lc" predates V7; it was invented at
|the University of Waterloo under V6 (maybe earlier).
|The 4BSD version has been posted to comp.sources.unix.
|
|On Xenix, lc is a link to ls, and is effectively an alias for "ls -C".
|This is probably a Xenixism, based on a Berkeleyism.

As far as I know, -C is not to discern between sorted down or sorted
across, but to force multiple column output. 'ls' and 'ls -C' give
exactly the same result (when connected to a terminal) on my system
(Ultrix 2.0, which is a Berkeleyism 8-). Remember that 'ls' is a very
old Unix program; it tries to be smart: when standard output is a
terminal you get automagically multiple columns (and sorted down), when
not the filenames each appear on one line; try f.i. 'ls|more'. Nowadays
that would be considered a kludge, but since 'ls' is that old, changing
it could perhaps break other programs (notably shell scripts).
So if you want multiple columns through the pipe, do it ala 'ls -C|more'.
If your experience with -C is different, your system is certainly
different from BSD.

|Why would anyone want their files sorted down instead of across?

That's not so unreasonable; telephone books are also organized that way.
In fact it is much easier scanning a vertical list than a horizontal one
(of course your opinion may differ ...). The only time I don't like this
is when a column is longer than the screen (but why shouldn't scrolling be
sidewards instead of downwards ...).

	 Leo.