Subject: bug#17878: Possible bug in GNU ls with -R

From: Eric Blake <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 30 Jun 2014 11:51:31 -0600

On 06/30/2014 10:22 AM, Paul Eggert wrote:
> Eric Blake wrote:
>> All other ls implementations behave the same.
> 
> Unfortunately that's not the case, as AIX 7.1 behaves the way the
> original requestor asked for, as does 7th Edition Unix.  Furthermore,
> the POSIX spec's EXAMPLES section
> <http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/ls.html#tag_20_73_17>
> (admittedly informative) agrees with AIX 7.1 and 7th Edition Unix.  My
> guess is that POSIX intended to specify the traditional behavior.
> However, so many implementations have gotten it wrong that one could
> easily argue the wording is unclear, and that the POSIX wording should
> be fixed to make it clear that both the traditional and the common
> behavior are allowed.  Another possibility is that we could change GNU
> ls to behave like traditional ls.

Then I'll go ahead and raise a defect report with the Austin Group, and
report back here once I get more of a feel for what will happen in POSIX.

-- 
Eric Blake   eblake redhat com    +1-919-301-3266
Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org