Subject: bug#67953: 30.0.50; ls-lisp messes up columns

From: Eli Zaretskii <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 22 Dec 2023 11:01:18 +0200

> Date: Thu, 21 Dec 2023 09:35:55 -0500
> From:  Stefan Monnier via "Bug reports for GNU Emacs,
>  the Swiss army knife of text editors" <[email-masked]>
> 
> Package: Emacs
> Version: 30.0.50
> 
> 
> After loading `ls-lisp`, I notice that with (setq
> ls-lisp-use-insert-directory-program t) I get the nice:
> 
>     C-x d /u*/s* RET  ==>
> 
>       /:
>       wildcard u*/s*/
>       drwxr-xr-x   2 root root 20480 10 déc 11:24 usr/sbin/
>       drwxr-xr-x 404 root root 16384  2 déc 15:05 usr/share/
>       drwxr-xr-x   4 root root  4096 22 fév  2023 usr/src/
> 
> But with (setq ls-lisp-use-insert-directory-program nil) I get:
> 
>     C-x d /u*/s* RET  ==>
> 
>       /:
>       wildcard u*/s*
>       drwxr-xr-x  2 root root 20480 12-10 11:24 usr/sbin
>       drwxr-xr-x404 root root 16384 12-02 15:05 usr/share
>        drwxr-xr-x  4 root root 4096 2023-02-22  usr/src
> 
> Notice the weird extra space in front of the last line and the missing
> space between "x" and "404" in the penultimate line.

It's a bug in dired-align-file (it sounds like it was never tested
with a version of 'ls' that doesn't support the --dired switch).  Its
algorithm breaks down if the entry of a file does not start with
spaces.  --dired guarantees that, but ls-lisp doesn't, and I wonder
what other versions of 'ls' do.

The simple kludge below, which simply prevents it from realigning the
first column of data, seems to fix it here.  WDYT?

diff --git a/lisp/dired.el b/lisp/dired.el
index cc548ba..3838368 100644
--- a/lisp/dired.el
+++ b/lisp/dired.el
@@ -1572,14 +1572,16 @@ dired-align-file
 		 ;; the beginning or the end of the next field, depending on
 		 ;; whether this field is left or right aligned).
 		 (align-pt-offset
-		  (save-excursion
-		    (goto-char other)
-		    (move-to-column curcol)
-		    (when (looking-at
-			   (concat
-			    (if (eq (char-before) ?\s) " *" "[^ ]* *")
-			    (if num-align "[0-9][^ ]*")))
-		      (- (match-end 0) (match-beginning 0)))))
+                  (if (zerop curcol)
+                      0
+		    (save-excursion
+		      (goto-char other)
+		      (move-to-column curcol)
+		      (when (looking-at
+			     (concat
+			      (if (eq (char-before) ?\s) " *" "[^ ]* *")
+			      (if num-align "[0-9][^ ]*")))
+		        (- (match-end 0) (match-beginning 0))))))
 		 ;; Now, the number of spaces to insert is align-pt-offset
 		 ;; minus the distance to the equivalent point on the
 		 ;; current line.