> I think a better solution is if we can turn off the new "feature" > of adapting the column widths to the data.
One way would be to extend --format to allow fairly arbitrary formats that can specify column widths. For example, Emacs could do this: ls --format='%11m %2l %8o %8g %7s %12d %f' Sure, this would do the job, but I think it would be extra work and add no real benefit. However, if Meyering wants to do it, I won't object to it. Another possibility is to have a new option to disable the new feature, e.g. "ls --traditional-column-widths". This would be a bit easier to implement, but would be less general We don't need extra generality just for generality's sake. and might have problems of its own (e.g., users and implementations don't agree on what the traditional widths are). This problem is not real. For Dired to work right when GNU ls is installed, we need only that GNU ls be consistent with itself when --traditional-column-widths is used. I understand that some non-GNU ls implementations also adapt column widths to data, so the Emacs problem would remain with these implementations, regardless of how we change GNU ls. We can suggest installing GNU ls. _______________________________________________ Bug-coreutils mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-coreutils