bug#22696: ls output changes considered unacceptable

[Ruediger Meier]

On Tuesday 16 February 2016, Paul Eggert wrote:
> On 02/16/2016 08:58 AM, Ruediger Meier wrote:
> > Terminal output should be human readable not machine readable.
>
> Sure, but under the old way of doing things, terminal output *wasn't*
> human-readable. For example:

If the file name _is_ readable at all, then it was printed in a more 
readable way. This is a regression.

> $ ls
> a?b  a?b  axb  c  d  e
> $ rm  a?b  c  d

Of course, non-printable chars are not correctly printed. Other tools 
like less, more, texteditor, webbrowser don't print non-printable 
chars. Why ls?

> rm: cannot remove 'd': No such file or directory

Who says that ls outout should be copy/pastable (!_into_shell_only_!). 
It's a corner case. That's why we have --quoting-style. That's fine as 
long as it's not the default.

And why is `ls | grep "files to copy/paste"' not copy/pastable by 
default then? This makes no sense.

No other command is printing filenames as annyoing as ls. What about 
readlink, basename, mktemp ...
Why they don't have a terminal mode too? I copy paste many other's 
command output very very often every day. Now ls is the only one which 
wants to help me with it ... but I hate it. I also copy/paste file 
names into emails, chat or commit messages ... not only into a _shell_ 
commandline.

At least you could have done it human readable like git, for example:

$ touch $'AAA\nBBB'
$ touch   $'AAA\x05BBB'
$ touch "other's"
$ git add *
$ git st

# Changes to be committed:
#   (use "git rm --cached <file>..." to unstage)
#
#       new file:   "AAA\005BBB"
#       new file:   "AAA\nBBB"
#       new file:   other's


> The new behavior is much more readable and understandable. Of course
> this is a contrived example (created via:
>
> touch 'a
> b' 'a?b' axb c 'd  e'
>
> )
> , but it's similar to situations that I run into all the time when 
> teaching newbies.New users should be better off with the new
> approach, in ordinary interactive use.

No! IMO Newbies should learn (most painful as possible!) that non-ascii 
filenames sucks. :) Maybe ls shouldn't show them at all by default ;)

If they want to use strange file names than they should use dolphin or 
konqueror. (Deleting files by click, no copy/pasting needed).

> I didn't comment on the original change, because I thought it was a
> no-brainer.

Please revert it.

> Yes, there is a backward-compatibility issue, but users 
> worried about compatibility should be using portable POSIX file names
> anyway, and 'ls' hasn't changed its behavior with portable file
> names.

I can't control what stupid file names come from other users or 
downloaded from the internet.

cu,
Rudi