Subject: Re: bug#32774: Filenames with spaces in ls

From: Paul Eggert <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 19 Sep 2018 12:46:01 -0700

Ivan Perez wrote:
> the presence of the extra quote and the misalignment that that causes draws 
> one's attention to the quote.
That's part of the intent. The quotes draw the reader's attention to the oddball 
file name, which is a good thing since these file names can cause trouble when 
they are cut and pasted from 'ls' output.

> File names with similar but related names no longer appear aligned in ls

That depends on what one means by 'appear aligned'. In this 'ls -l' output:

-rw-rw-r--. 1 eggert eggert 0 Sep 19 12:39  a
-rw-rw-r--. 1 eggert eggert 0 Sep 19 12:39 'a b'
-rw-rw-r--. 1 eggert eggert 0 Sep 19 12:39  a-b

all three file names are aligned to start at the same screen column; there's a 
column of 'a's that line up, and the quotes are not part of the quoted file 
name. I prefer having file names aligned like that, and wouldn't favor aligning 
the opening quote to be equal to the unquoted files' initial 'a's. Admittedly 
preferences differ, but alignment is not really the issue here; it's the quotes 
that people are largely objecting to.