Subject: Re: bug#19218: Inconsistent spacing of output of "ls --full-time [file argument]"

From: Paul Eggert <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 29 Nov 2014 13:14:33 -0800

I don't see a bug in the cases you mention.  First, 'ls' dynamically adjusts 
column widths to fit the data, and this is considered to be a feature.  Second, 
different platforms have different time stamp resolutions.  The idea that all 
dates should use the same width is doomed anyway, since file time stamps can 
exceed the year 9999:

$ touch -d'10000-01-01 00:00:00' far-in-future
$ touch now
$ ls -l --full-time
-rw-r--r-- 1 eggert eggert 0 10000-01-01 00:00:00.000000000 -0800 far-in-future
-rw-r--r-- 1 eggert eggert 0 2014-11-29 13:07:55.182466680 -0800 now

Arguably this last example *is* a bug in 'ls', as dates should line up even when 
they're outlandish.  But it's not likely to be a bug one runs into with real 
files, at least, not for another 7985 years or so.

> this email is sent with a
> legitimate email address, hopefully not for publication.

GNU bug reports are public, I'm afraid.