Re: right-justification of uid's/gid's is a mistake.

[Bauke Jan Douma]

On Thu, Apr 15, 2004 at 12:32:56AM -0700, Paul Eggert wrote:
> > I think there's no justification (pun intended) for the current
> > right-justification of uid's/gid's -- it really looks ugly.
> 
> In some cases it looks better, in some cases it looks worse.
> Here's an example where it looks better:
> 
>    $ old-ls -l a b c
>    -rw-r--r--  1 99       109             0 Apr 15 00:20 a
>    -rw-r--r--  1 1000000  9999999         0 Apr 15 00:20 b
>    -rw-r--r--  1 99999999 10000000        0 Apr 15 00:20 c
>    $ new-ls -l a b c
>    -rw-r--r--  1       99      109 0 Apr 15 00:20 a
>    -rw-r--r--  1  1000000  9999999 0 Apr 15 00:20 b
>    -rw-r--r--  1 99999999 10000000 0 Apr 15 00:20 c
> 
> as integers are usually printed right-adjusted, not left-adjusted.

I agree with you here, but then again these are all numeric.

> I agree that your example looks a bit outre, but then the data were
> pretty outre too.
> 
> One possible change would be to right-adjust the numbers, but to have
> their right margin be at a minimal location.  That would cause the
> output to have the "clean formatting" that you suggested, while still
> preserving the right-adjustedness of numbers in the example above.

I'm not sure I follow you here -- what format string would that
be in C?

Anyway, I saw some talk the other day about having a --format
option for 'ls' and others.  I don't know if that idea is gonna
fly, but I wouldn't be against it -- would enable you to please
100% of the people 100% of the time.

-BJ