On 31/01/16 06:48, Harald Dunkel wrote: > Hi folks, > > how comes that suddenly I have to define an environment variable > > QUOTING_STYLE=literal > > for something that worked very well since the 70s? I appreciate > your continuous effort to improve coreutils, but this change is a > bad move.
The reasons we changed the default was: - It only happens when outputting to terminals - It disambiguates the output for users - Output can be pasted back in the shell for further processing - Users can get back to the old format by adding -N to their ls alias I see some disadvantages as: - Slightly misaligns -l output when some files have spaces - Produces longer output for file names with single quotes So that's 2 functional advantages over 2 aesthetic disadvantages. Given the advantages especially for new users and the complications of producing shell quoted file names oneself, we chose the new default. thanks, Pádraig
