I think if someone requires a specific output format, then they should
specify the format they want with (for example) -printtf.
If the capabilities of -printf are insufficient to reproduce the
effect of, say, -ls, then we should improve it[*]. This general
problem is why the -printf documentation says:
%{ %[ %(
Reserved for future use.
See commit 9cb1805e619b0f3aebd0984856de24964218bce2 of 2011-06-2011.
If we're going to use one or more of these reserved sequences, I would
like one of them to be for user-specified extensions (since that's the
kind of use I had in mind when I reserved them).
[*] One of the challenges of fully reproducing -ls in the form of
-printf is that some of the behaviours are conditional, for example
printing "a -> b" when a is a symbolic link. This might require
scripting (unless we create a special purpose format specifier which
performs the conditional itself, internally).
Like Bernhard, I am resistant to using some unilaterally chosen
environment variable for this, and also resistant to supporting some
environment variable whose effect is inconsistent across multiple
systems. It's hard enough to write portable shell scripts without us
accidentally making it harder.
Someone who tracks down a bug and eventually discovers that the bugfix
is to change "find" to "env -u TIME_STYLE find" everywhere would
justifiably be grumpy, I'd think. |
Even if we will eventually accept $TIME_STYLE I think prototyping it
as a command-line option is likely a good plan.
Thanks,
James.
