GNU bug report logs - #19218
Inconsistent spacing of output of "ls --full-time [file argument]"

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Message #21 received at control <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Pádraig Brady <P <at> draigBrady.com>
To: michaels <at> michaels.demon.co.uk, 19218 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#19218: Inconsistent spacing of output of "ls --full-time
 [file argument]"
Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2014 02:09:19 +0000

tag 19218 notabug
close 19218
stop

On 29/11/14 21:14, Paul Eggert wrote:
> 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.

Right. This is a limitation of cut, rather than anything wrong with ls.
See the awk usage at http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/cut

These examples might help:

  ls --full-time | tr -s ' ' | cut -d' ' -f6-
  ls --full-time | awk '{ print substr($0, index($0,$6)) }'

> 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.

:)

thanks,
Pádraig.

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