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Re: Inaccurate/incorrect description of the -b option in man ls(1)
From: |
Jim Meyering |
Subject: |
Re: Inaccurate/incorrect description of the -b option in man ls(1) |
Date: |
Thu, 18 Mar 2010 16:20:03 +0100 |
Eric Blake wrote:
> On 03/18/2010 02:34 AM, Jim Meyering wrote:
>> address@hidden wrote:
>>> In the manpage for ls(1), the description of the -b option says,
>>> "print octal escapes for nongraphic characters"
>
>> Note that the authoritative documentation for GNU ls is not the
>> man page (which is merely the massaged output of ls --help)
>> but rather the info doc, i.e., what you get when you run
>> "info coreutils ls". Its "Formatting the file names" section says this:
>>
>> `-b'
>> `--escape'
>> `--quoting-style=escape'
>> Quote nongraphic characters in file names using alphabetic and
>> octal backslash sequences like those used in C.
>>
>> which is consistent with GNU ls's behavior.
>
> How about a patch that shortens the --help output:
>
> s/octal //
>
> or maybe slightly longer, but still legible:
>
> s/octal /c-style/
Good idea. I like this one.
Thanks.
I did it in your name. Ok?
>From 94f9ef9ae978c5262644089dbef8796e74c15ba4 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Eric Blake <address@hidden>
Date: Thu, 18 Mar 2010 16:19:08 +0100
Subject: [PATCH] doc: improve ls --help's description of --escape (-b)
* src/ls.c (usage): Be more precise about how --escape (-b) works:
say "C-style escapes", not "octal escapes". Reported by Jacky Fong.
---
THANKS | 1 +
src/ls.c | 2 +-
2 files changed, 2 insertions(+), 1 deletions(-)
diff --git a/THANKS b/THANKS
index a538644..65a3ab9 100644
--- a/THANKS
+++ b/THANKS
@@ -255,6 +255,7 @@ Ilya N. Golubev address@hidden
Ingo Saitz address@hidden
Ivan Labath address@hidden
Ivo Timmermans address@hidden
+Jacky Fong address@hidden
James address@hidden
James Antill address@hidden
James Lemley address@hidden
diff --git a/src/ls.c b/src/ls.c
index 3025a76..6bd680e 100644
--- a/src/ls.c
+++ b/src/ls.c
@@ -4594,7 +4594,7 @@ Mandatory arguments to long options are mandatory for
short options too.\n\
-a, --all do not ignore entries starting with .\n\
-A, --almost-all do not list implied . and ..\n\
--author with -l, print the author of each file\n\
- -b, --escape print octal escapes for nongraphic characters\n\
+ -b, --escape print C-style escapes for nongraphic characters\n\
"), stdout);
fputs (_("\
--block-size=SIZE use SIZE-byte blocks. See SIZE format below\n\
--
1.7.0.2.455.g91132