Re: revised use of column space in "ls"

[Miles Bader]

Markus Kuhn <address@hidden> writes:
> I still favour the use of a single full date and time, independent of
> the age of the file, just as MS-DOS DIR did.

I disagree; a little more space wouldn't be a big deal, but that's a
lot more space (too much).

> Since "ls" has to read the entire directory in for sorting anyway, why
> not save column space by adapting the column widths to the actually
> needed widths, just as <TABLE> in HTML does?

That seems like a good idea; a possible objection would be that it
would break programs that parse the output of ls, but I suspect that
most such programs have to be pretty flexible anyway, to deal with the
wide variety of versions of ls.

> Using a different colour for multi-linked files that are not
> directories would be far more informative and free another 5 precious
> columns that could go towards the full date notation and more space
> for the file size.

This was a joke, right?

-Miles
-- 
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.