GNU bug report logs - #30717
i miss some ls-features

Previous Next

To add a comment to this bug, you must first unarchive it, by sending
a message to control AT debbugs.gnu.org, with unarchive 30717 in the body.
You can then email your comments to 30717 AT debbugs.gnu.org in the normal way.

Toggle the display of automated, internal messages from the tracker.

Message #5 received at submit <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: kalle <kalle <at> projektwerkstatt.de>
To: bug-coreutils <at> gnu.org
Subject: i miss some ls-features
Date: Mon, 5 Mar 2018 22:01:41 +0100

hello
I wonder why for the ls-command I don't find the following features, I
consider important:
- list the size of files. For directories, list the total size of the
tree beneath them
- for ls -R (recursive presentation) limit it to a certain depth
greetings,
kalle

Message #12 received at 30717-done <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Eric Blake <eblake <at> redhat.com>
To: kalle <kalle <at> projektwerkstatt.de>, 30717-done <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#30717: i miss some ls-features
Date: Mon, 5 Mar 2018 15:16:27 -0600

tag 30717 notabug
thanks

On 03/05/2018 03:01 PM, kalle wrote:
> hello
> I wonder why for the ls-command I don't find the following features, I
> consider important:
> - list the size of files. For directories, list the total size of the
> tree beneath them

Because this feature is already provided by the 'du' tool.

> - for ls -R (recursive presentation) limit it to a certain depth
> greetings,

Because this feature is already provided by the 'find' tool.

One philosophy of Unix design is that each tool should do one thing 
well, rather than trying to repeat functionality already present elsewhere.

As such, I'm marking this as not a bug in the coreutils database, but 
you are welcome to continue conversation if you think you have strong 
arguments for changing ls.  Note that if there is an alternative 
implementation of ls (such as BSD ls) that does what you want via a 
particular command line option, then that is a much stronger argument 
for teaching coreutils ls to do the same thing.  But merely adding 
something to ls that can already be accomplished by another standardized 
tool is probably just going to be bloat to an already large 'ls' binary.

-- 
Eric Blake, Principal Software Engineer
Red Hat, Inc.           +1-919-301-3266
Virtualization:  qemu.org | libvirt.org

Previous Next

GNU bug tracking system
Copyright (C) 1999 Darren O. Benham, 1997,2003 nCipher Corporation Ltd, 1994-97 Ian Jackson.