On 7/26/21 5:00 PM, Pádraig Brady wrote:
> The patch set looks good thanks.
Wait - I see another reason why we didn't add it earlier:
The --null option is not compatible with about half of the other options of
ls(1);
at least the actual output is more than questionable, and not usable in
programmatic
context. The -R option is the first one which obviously can't work as such.
The following options don't work well with --null, because they output other,
additional information or transform/escape the file names:
-b, --escape print C-style escapes for nongraphic characters
-C list entries by columns
--color[=WHEN] colorize the output; WHEN can be 'always' (default
if omitted), 'auto', or 'never'; more info below
-F, --classify append indicator (one of */=>@|) to entries
--file-type likewise, except do not append '*'
--full-time like -l --time-style=full-iso
-g like -l, but do not list owner
--indicator-style=WORD append indicator with style WORD to entry names:
none (default), slash (-p),
file-type (--file-type), classify (-F)
-i, --inode print the index number of each file
-l use a long listing format
-m fill width with a comma separated list of entries
-n, --numeric-uid-gid like -l, but list numeric user and group IDs
-o like -l, but do not list group information
-p, --indicator-style=slash
append / indicator to directories
-q, --hide-control-chars print ? instead of nongraphic characters
-Q, --quote-name enclose entry names in double quotes
--quoting-style=WORD use quoting style WORD for entry names:
literal, locale, shell, shell-always,
shell-escape, shell-escape-always, c, escape
(overrides QUOTING_STYLE environment variable)
-R, --recursive list subdirectories recursively
-s, --size print the allocated size of each file, in blocks
-x list entries by lines instead of by columns
-Z, --context print any security context of each file
While the actual change is small - i.e., change the newline to a '\0' for the
eolchar,
I'm afraid that it will become quite hairy to discuss the actual problems of
future users
of that option when combining it with one of the above options.
I really have some qualms with adding --null to ls(1). If this is about
listing files
in the current directory in a certain sort order for a processing purpose, then
this
would IMO warrant a new utility rather than blowing ls(1).
Have a nice day,
Berny
