bug#26991: New quoting takes up unnecessary space

[Pádraig Brady]

On 19/05/17 07:48, L A Walsh wrote:
> 
> 
> The new format uses extra spacing on columns where it isn't needed --
> but the extra space isn't enough to handle the 1 file that was quoted
> (needs 5 extra columns).  Where does it get '3' (and why doesn't it use
> 2?)?

Yes one can construct edge cases where this isn't ideal.
The normal case though is the quoted files are interspersed
in various columns. It's more important to have consistent
spacing I think on modern terminals. Anyway with layouts
like this you get more wasted space when a few files have
relatively longer names, irrespective of quoting, which is
a much more common issue.

The spacing is increased to 3 to allow for an extra space
for left alignment of non quoted items with quoted ones.

The alignment is more important for long listing I think,
but thought it a net benefit for other formats also.

Pádraig.