Re: [coreutils] Bug: ls --tabsize=4

[James Youngman]

On Sat, May 24, 2008 at 4:51 AM, Philip Ganchev <address@hidden> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> "ls" with a tab size other than 8 produces mis-formatted output in my
> in Xterm, gnome-terminal and Linux console (see attached screenshots).

Obviously!

If you tell ls that the terminal's tab width is something other than
the actual value, ls will draw incorrect conclusions about the effect
of printing a tab character.   If the --tabsize argument matches the
terminal's idea of what to do with a tab character, the output will be
aligned.

I don't know offhand how to modify your X11 terminal emulator's idea
of where the tab stop is, but it's easy to do this on a GNU/Linux
virtual console:

t=8; setterm -regtabs $t; ls --tabsize=$t /etc
t=4; setterm -regtabs $t; ls --tabsize=$t /etc

... and so on.    By the way, congratulations on producing a model bug
report.  IMHO we're not talking about a bug, but your email included
all the information needed for us to help.   If only everyone did this
so well.

James.