bug#17618: ls -l dangerous when listing links

[Pádraig Brady]

tag 17618 notabug
close 17618
stop

On 05/28/2014 02:36 PM, Michał Adamczyk wrote:
> Call it a bug or call it a feature. It is dangerous though.
> 
> When using `ls -l` to list a directory with links in it, it will produce an 
> output similar to this:
> 
> lrwxrwxrwx 1 user group 30 1980-01-01 00:01 link_name -> 
> /path/to/destination/file
> 
> Pretty cool, huh?
> However, if you select this line and accidentally hit right mouse button, 
> it'll get copied to your prompt. And if you select more than one line, it'll 
> get copied with \n which will get interpreted as if you pushed the Enter.
> 
> So the whole line gets interpreted as a command:
> lrwxrwxrwx [no such command] 1 user group 30 1980-01-01 00:01 link_name - 
> [parameters for non-existing command] > /path/to/destination/file [redirect 
> output to that file]
> 
> Since the output is empty, you'll get the target of that link overwritten 
> with an empty file.
> 
> My suggestion is to change the representation symbols of link to something 
> that won't get interpreted.

I see the issue.
Though I don't think there is anything we can do just to backwards compat.
I'm sure there are scripts somewhere depending on the '->' portion.
You're free to change that yourself though with a wrapper.
See http://www.pixelbeat.org/scripts/l for example which uses '▪▶' instead.

thanks,
Pádraig.