On 19/05/17 07:48, L A Walsh wrote: > > > The new format uses extra spacing on columns where it isn't needed -- > but the extra space isn't enough to handle the 1 file that was quoted > (needs 5 extra columns). Where does it get '3' (and why doesn't it use > 2?)?
Yes one can construct edge cases where this isn't ideal. The normal case though is the quoted files are interspersed in various columns. It's more important to have consistent spacing I think on modern terminals. Anyway with layouts like this you get more wasted space when a few files have relatively longer names, irrespective of quoting, which is a much more common issue. The spacing is increased to 3 to allow for an extra space for left alignment of non quoted items with quoted ones. The alignment is more important for long listing I think, but thought it a net benefit for other formats also. Pádraig.
