Re: ls bug?

[hooanon05]

Thanks for the reply.

Paul Eggert:
> For every line of info 'ls' can't determine due to permissions issues,
> 'ls' prints a diagnostic; it also prints '?' for the unknown info.
> 'ls' eventually exits with status 1.  The '?'s are not garbage: they
> are standins for unknown information.

Let me make sure,
- ls(1) should exit with an error in this case.
- v5.97 didn't exit with the error, it was a bug.


> Perhaps the current behavior is confusing and could be improved, but
> surely it wouldn't be wise for 'ls' to be silent in such a situation:
> 'ls' should let the user know there's a problem, and it should output
> the best information that it can.

It is verbose to print '?' to stdout since the error message is printed
out to stderr and the exit status is non-zero, isn't it?


Junjiro Okajima