Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!shadooby!samsung!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!rpi!tale From: tale@cs.rpi.edu (David C Lawrence) Newsgroups: gnu.emacs Subject: Re: Dired Message-ID: Date: 6 Jan 90 07:15:49 GMT References: <1323@mit-amt.MEDIA.MIT.EDU> <34211@mips.mips.COM> Followup-To: gnu.emacs.bug Organization: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy NY Lines: 39 In <34211@mips.mips.COM> steveh@abbott.mips.com (Stephen C. Hill) writes: > Do a Meta-X edit-options and then search for ";; > dired-listing-switches:". In my default, I have "-al", which are > the ls options to be used in dired. Add the F, on a time-by-time > basis, or make the setq change in your .emacs file. Don't do this if you still want to use the other features of dired on anything other than a regular file. That trailing character will screw it up. Dired could perhaps be fixed to accomodate this, but as it stands now it will not give you the results you expect. The documentation string for dired-listing-switches, which will be readily at hand if you do the suggested M-x edit-options, warns against using the -F, -s or -i options to ls. It doesn't explain why there, but here are the main reasons with the currently distributed dired: -F: with -l puts a trailing / on each directory name, a * on each executable and an = on each socket. For the directories everything should still behave normally, but for the executables and sockets everything screws up because dired thinks the filename includes that character. The information provided by -F is already available when -l is enabled, which means two things: a) the -F is unnecessary and b) for those people that really want it, dired could do The Right Thing by checking the other information on the line. -s: This puts the information regarding the size of the file before the file type and mode information, which ends up screwing up the test to see if the line indicates a directory. This could be fixed too. -i: Same as -s, execpt that it shows the inode number. Any public follow-ups should probably go to the bug-emacs/gnu.emacs.bug list. My main concern was further emphasizing here why using -F might not be such a hot idea, in spite of Steve's good intentions. Dave -- (setq mail '("tale@cs.rpi.edu" "tale@ai.mit.edu" "tale@rpitsmts.bitnet"))