Re: "ls" spacing between columns

[Jordan Russell]

Jim Meyering wrote:
> Yes, it's possible, if that behavior is controlled by a new option,
> but it's hard to justify adding new options to ls.

May I ask why such behavior would have to be "optional"?

For many, many years (at least a decade IIRC) "ls" fleshed out the user and
group name columns to 8 characters. Typically this resulted in there being
several spaces worth of padding between the columns, which made listings
quite readable -- it was very easy to tell the columns apart at a glance.
Now the column widths are determined dynamically -- and that's a great step
forward -- but it has come at a cost of readability, since there's often
only a single space separating the columns. It seems especially tight when
listing a file with a numeric uid/gid:

-rw-r--r--  1 123 456 5 Apr 10 18:15 test

(Quick! What's the size of that file?)

I guess I fail to see what the "downside" is here. The suggested change
strikes me as a reasonable compromise between the old and the new behaviors.
(And again, not that it counts for much, but BSD's "ls" already does the
same thing.)

Jordan Russell