GNU bug report logs - #26991
ls-quotes: new quoting takes up unnecessary space

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Message #8 received at 26991 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Pádraig Brady <P <at> draigBrady.com>
To: L A Walsh <coreutils <at> tlinx.org>, 26991 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#26991: New quoting takes up unnecessary space
Date: Fri, 19 May 2017 09:59:34 +0100

On 19/05/17 07:48, L A Walsh wrote:
> 
> 
> The new format uses extra spacing on columns where it isn't needed --
> but the extra space isn't enough to handle the 1 file that was quoted
> (needs 5 extra columns).  Where does it get '3' (and why doesn't it use
> 2?)?

Yes one can construct edge cases where this isn't ideal.
The normal case though is the quoted files are interspersed
in various columns. It's more important to have consistent
spacing I think on modern terminals. Anyway with layouts
like this you get more wasted space when a few files have
relatively longer names, irrespective of quoting, which is
a much more common issue.

The spacing is increased to 3 to allow for an extra space
for left alignment of non quoted items with quoted ones.

The alignment is more important for long listing I think,
but thought it a net benefit for other formats also.

Pádraig.

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