On Tue, 16 Feb 2016 16:07:35 +0200 Aldemir Akpinar <aldemir.akpi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> There's a recent discussion on the coreutils mailing list, where some > people complained about the default ls output with latest release. On > coreutils 8.25 ls will wrap filenames with quotes if it includes > whitespace. > > And when people protest, the answers are usual arguments; it just > happens on the console output, or just add -N to your aliases etc. > etc. > > Here's a discussion with the response from the maintainer as well: > > http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/258679/why-is-ls-suddenly-surrounding-items-with-spaces-in-single-quotes > > When this version hits the distributions, it will break many scripts. > So why change the default behaviour? > -- > aldemir My response is unresponsive to your question, aldemir, but this is something I've given lots of thought to in the past. I quote from the referenced web page: ================================================= I just noticed that on one of my machines (running Debian Sid) whenever I type ls any file name with spaces has single quotes surrounding it. ^^^^^^^^^^^ ================================================= Here at Troubleshooters.Com we have a policy that only the following characters can appear in a filename: [a-z,A-Z,0-9,\.\_\-] You've all heard me criticize programmers who make it easier on themselves by making it harder on the user. But there are limits to that philosophy, and given that there's so much filename parsing throughout all of POSIX, and so much separating commands into executable names and arguments, I believe filenames should have been restricted for the good of everybody. PDP11/RT-11 and CPM didn't allow spaces in filenames, and they worked just fine. Think about where most of your space-laden filenames come from: They're emailed to you by no-tech, no-discipline Windows-weenies. Well, unless FreeDesktop has recently made space-laden config files, but I don't think even FreeDesktop is *that* ignorant. Of course, none of this responds to the fact that space-laden filenames *do* exist, so script writers have had to work around that, and some of those workarounds might bust. SteveT Steve Litt February 2016 featured book: The Key to Everyday Excellence http://www.troubleshooters.com/key _______________________________________________ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
