Regarding quoting in ls

[Andrew McCollum]

Hello,

I have been using gnu software for 20 years. I have been brought so much
happiness by being able to use free software on my computer to create art
that can be shared with anyone without restriction. Thank you so much for
your work on this, I appreciate it very greatly. I have donated before to
the foundation and will likely do so again in the future.

Respectfully, I do not like the quoted output from ls by default. You are
violating the principle of least astonishment by having it enabled by
default and certainly gave me a shock thinking I had been hacked into and
rootkitted or that I had inadvertently broken my localization settings
during a major distro release upgrade wherein I first encountered this
"helpful feature". This needlessly breaks consistency with other ls
implementations as well, which is a problem for me as I use bsd, solaris,
and aix daily at work and share bash scripts between them.

Perhaps a --quoted output flag that is disabled by default would be
something you would please consider. Using the flag to disable the quoted
output is not a viable option for me as most systems I work on do not
belong to me, and I would not be so bold as to change the owner's settings
on them.

Thank you for your time.

Andrew