On Sat, Jul 30, 2011 at 10:14 AM, Jim Meyering <[email protected]> wrote: > Pádraig Brady wrote: > ... >> `strace lsattr ...` shows it calls ioctl (...FS_IOC_GETFLAGS...) >> So there would be overhead. >> The output of ls is fairly constrained too for compat reasons.
well if that rule has been broken once for selinux (adding extra symbols) then it can be broken again. > One way by which ls -l could inform us that a file has > "attributes" like that would be via what POSIX calls the > "optional alternate access method flag". Currently, > it can be a space, a "+", or a ".": i'd advocate, when the ls --color option is set, changing the background to something attention-grabbing (e.g. red). it's far too easy to miss an extra symbol otherwise, and "+", although intuitively saying "there's more than meets the eye, here" is too similar to a line of "-"s to really make people sit up and take notice. i'd certainly go "oh look, there's a +, how pretty", but a + on a red background i might just stop and think, "eh? i no unnerstan, let's look up man page or call some friends". l.
