Re: [PATCH]: ls: add --user-format option for user defined format

[Pádraig Brady]

Ondřej Vašík wrote:
> Let's do some summary, feel free to add/comment items if you have
> something not mentioned here:
> 
> What patched ls --user-format can and upstream find -printf not:
> 1) colored files by LS_COLORS or automatically if requested
> 2) could be used simply as ls alias for normal users - as they could
> still specify additional ls options like time-style, quoting-style,
> sorting style, blocksize, units and other things without modifying
> format string
> 6) Automated column width computation (in find -printf you have to
> hardcode the column width in %N.NX syntax yourself, otherwise there is
> no defined human-readable column structure.)

> I guess points #1, #2, #6 are the most important things, as #1 and #2
> makes the output more user friendly and #6 generally readable by human

Right.

As I see it ls output is tuned for human consumption,
while find is tuned for further consumption by other scripts/utils.
In my experience I've only needed to tweak output like this
to ease the subsequent processing in scripts/utils.
I.E. I've never needed it in ls, and I'm not sure it's
worth duplicating this in ls (adding a lot of interface
for all users to parse and most ignore).

Pádraig.