Luk Claes wrote: ... > But it apparently does not show when capabilites are active, could that > be added (or was that added in the meantime in a subsequent version)? > > $ setcap cap_chown+ep foo > > $ ls -l foo > -rw-r--r-- 1 luk luk 5 Jul 22 00:37 foo > > $ sudo getcap foo > foo = cap_chown+ep
That's right: capabilities are currently not taken into account when printing ls -l's "optional alternate access method" flag. However, with --color, we already do test for the existence of capabilities, and if found, highlight each affected file differently. A comment says that the capabilities existence test adds 30% to the cost of ls --color (it's probably even more, now), so I would not impose it on ls -l without due consideration. We know from recent performance-related improvements that checks like this can have a big impact when operating on remote file systems. When already using --color, we do get each test result for free, so it is tempting to take it into account in that case. However, that would make the use of --color change more than just highlighting, but the actual information displayed, which I would not want to do.