Re: bone to pick with ls

[Paul Eggert]

Burt Smith <address@hidden> writes:

> If I now alias ls as 'ls -F', I get:
>
> % ls
> foo@
> % ls foo
> foo@

POSIX requires this behavior.  See
<http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/utilities/ls.html>
which says that -F does "not follow symbolic links named as operands
unless the -H or -L options are specified".  I just checked OpenBSD
3.4 ls, and it agrees with GNU ls and POSIX here.

> Can I get someone to change this new behavior
> to an option and to restore the original behavior?

I think it's probably better to conform to POSIX by default here;
this particular problem isn't worth the hassle of nonconformance.

> Or alternately, to change the behavior of the new
> --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir to use the
> 'classic' manner (i.e. with ls -l it does NOT dereference
> unless -L is also present).

That sounds good to me.  But shouldn't the name of that option be
changed in that case?  Perhaps it should be renamed to
"--dereference-traditional" or something like that.  Or, if someone
really likes the --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir behavior
the way it is, then we could add a new --dereference-traditional
option to cause the traditional behavior that you prefer.

I think I'll let Jim Meyering look into this one, as he knows more
about the underlying motivation for
--dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir.  Please bug us about it
again if you don't hear anything for a couple of weeks, as it sounds
like a real annoyance for you.  (I don't use -F much so I haven't run
into the problem.)