Subject: bug#51507: ls incorrectly displays single quotes

From: Paul Eggert <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 30 Oct 2021 17:01:56 -0700

On 10/29/21 13:32, Joel Hansen wrote:
> ls is incorrectly displaying single quotes around folders with spaces in
> them. This is confusing and unhelpful.

Opinions evidently differ on that point. That being said, here's an 
example where the quotes help and where your suggestion of using -N 
everywhere would introduce confusion.

$ ls -lN
total 0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 eggert eggert 6 Oct 30 16:55 c -> a -> b
lrwxrwxrwx 1 eggert eggert 1 Oct 30 16:56 c -> a -> b
$ ls -l
total 0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 eggert eggert 6 Oct 30 16:55  c -> 'a -> b'
lrwxrwxrwx 1 eggert eggert 1 Oct 30 16:56 'c -> a' -> b