Subject: bug#53739: 28.0.91; "C-x d" fails when "emacs -Q" starts on NetBSD with plan9/bin on head of PATH

From: Eli Zaretskii <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 05 Feb 2022 09:37:00 +0200

> Date: Sat, 5 Feb 2022 03:07:07 +0000 (UTC)
> From: Van Ly <[email-masked]>
> cc: [email-masked], [email-masked]
> 
> The "result" exit status is "1" on line 7512 closing parenthesises.
> 
> The call is "ls -al -- /usr/X" and the problem is Plan's ls doesn't
> take the "-a" switch.  For example
> 
> '''
> % ls -a
> usage: ls [-dlmnpqrstuFQ] [file ...]
> % echo $?
> 1
> % ls -al
> usage: ls [-dlmnpqrstuFQ] [file ...]
> % echo $?
> 1
> '''

Thanks, the problem is clear now.

> The Edebug steps continue to line 7581.
> 
> lisp/files.el:7581
> "Listing directory failed but `access-file' worked"
> 
> In the case of Plan9's ls what is needed is to leave out the "-a" switch.

Which means "C-u C-x d" should fix your use case nicely.  You can also
customize dired-listing-switches in your init file, if you intend to
use this version of 'ls' routinely.  It's a defcustom for this very
reason.

Bottom line: I think we can close this bug with no further action.