Re: [PATCH]: ls: add --user-format option for user defined format

[James Youngman]

On Fri, Nov 7, 2008 at 8:39 AM, Jim Meyering <address@hidden> wrote:
> Have you considered adding SELinux-related format directives to GNU find?

I would likely accept such patches into find, subject to a GNU
copyright assignment of course.

More generally, a more flexible syntax for find's -printf formats
might be useful.  Because of the limited number of format directive
letters remaining unused in find, I have been thinking about
directives based on names.   This might look like  %20.18{pathname}s,
%{filemode}o %{filemode}d and so on.   It's inappropriate to
complicate the format directives completely to the point where find
has an embedded string formatting language though (as well as its
embedded filesystem predicate language).  If somebody did this work it
would probably make sense to refactor the code a bit such that the
formatting implementation could be lifted out as a module and re-used
elsewhere.

If you're interested in pursuing this (either the SELinux format
enhancements or the more ambitious change), please email
address@hidden

Thanks.
James.