> I'd say -1 is the option for "the output is meant to read
> programmatically" and [its] antonym is -C for "the output for human
> consumption".
That's plausible, but, yes, I agree that in that case the manpage's
descriptions are inaccurate.
> If ls outputs to a pipe it infers -1 automatically unless -C is
> specified
Actually, not "to a pipe" but "to a non-tty", in my experience.
> The total is "for human consumption" (phrased as "the output is to a
> terminal"), so when you specify -1 you turn that off.
Possibly.
For what it's worth, it appears this behaviour is very longstanding. I
find that 1.4T and 5.2 behave identically in this respect and are
consistent with the "programmatic consumption versus human consumption"
interpretation. In a directory containing three empty files named one,
two, and three:
ls -s
ls -sC
ls -sC | cat
total 0
0 one 0 three 0 two
ls -s | cat
ls -s1
ls -s1 | cat
0 one
0 three
0 two
Mouse
