Re: "ls" spacing between columns

[Jim Meyering]

"Alfred M. Szmidt" <address@hidden> wrote:
...
>    > Mmm... Maybe there is even a smallish bug in POSIX, from the
>    > example section (ls -laRF):
>    >
>    > -rwxr--r--   1 hlj      prog         572 Jul  4 12:07 foo*
>    >
>    > That doesn't corespond with the above rule for -l.  Should this
>    > be reported to the OpenGroup?
>
>    What part doesn't correspond?
>
> One (two for the file permission and link count) space between each
> field.  Where as the example has more then one/two spaces between each
> field.
>
> "%s %u %s %s %u %s %s\n", <file mode>, <number of links>,
>     <owner name>, <group name>, <number of bytes in the file>,
>     <date and time>, <pathname>

I don't remember the rationale, but seem to recall that
there was no restriction on field widths, so using %2d
(as might have been done for the sample line's link count)
would be conforming.  Besides, some variance is required
if you want to make varying-length user names align in columns.
Same with link counts of 1 and 99.